At a Strategic Forum for Institutional Investors today, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger outlined the company's strategy, revealing more details about its plans to deliver the software-defined datacenter, expand its hybrid cloud offerings and empower the multi-device era. 

"VMware's vision is to empower people and organizations by radically simplifying IT through virtualization software," said Gelsinger. "Our customers are looking to us to help them solve some of the toughest challenges in IT in simple and elegant ways thereby delivering new levels of efficiency, control and agility.  To do this, we will continue to introduce new innovations and offerings that will empower IT as a broker of services that drive speed of business and competitive advantage."

In 2013, VMware will execute against three growth priorities: 

Redefining Infrastructure: The Software-Defined Data Center 
Through the software-defined data center VMware will extend the benefits of virtualization to all areas of the data center - network, security, storage and management. Today, the company revealed its intentions to merge the VMware vCloud Networking and Security product line with the Nicira Network Virtualization Platform (NVP) into a single product family based on a common technology foundation, to be named VMware NSX.

Expected to launch in the second half of 2013, VMware NSX will represent the full potential of network virtualization by working across VMware and non-VMware hypervisors and cloud management systems, as well as any underlying networking hardware.  Additionally, VMware NSX will provide an open framework for the integration of ecosystem services for networking and security. By virtualizing the network, VMware NSX will allow customers to accelerate application deployment, lower both capital and operational costs and transform network operations in a non-disruptive manner (read the blog).

Delivering the Hybrid Cloud 
Today VMware announced its plans to extend the software-defined data center with a hybrid cloud service offering that will allow its 480,000 customers to reap the benefits of the public cloud without changing their existing applications while using a common management, orchestration, networking and security model. 

VMware expects to launch VMware vCloud Hybrid Service later this year and intends to make it available through its existing channel, working with its extensive partner ecosystem to accelerate customers' journey to the cloud.  VMware has created a new Hybrid Cloud Services business unit, appointing cloud services veteran Bill Fathers as senior vice president and general manager ( Read the press release).

Empowering the Multi-Device Era 
At today's event, VMware demonstrated how it is helping customers connect end-users to their data, applications and desktops with the newly released VMware Horizon Suite.  A comprehensive platform for workforce mobility, the VMware Horizon Suite uses virtualization to transform silos of data, applications and desktops into centralized IT services that can be easily provisioned, managed and delivered to end-users on the devices of their choice.  Introduced in February 2013, the VMware Horizon Suite is empowering VMware customers to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile workforce without sacrificing control and security. 

EMC Corporation and VMware, Inc. are holding their 2013 Strategic Forum for Institutional Investors on Wednesday, March 13, 2013 beginning at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time. The live video webcast and agenda for the day is available on EMC's and VMware's Investor Relations websites at: http://www.emc.com/ir and http://ir.vmware.com, respectively. The webcast replay of the event will be available on the above websites within 24 hours following the event.