VMware Li Ying: 1 billion capital injections in China how to spend

"Csdn" at the VFORUM2014 conference, VMware announced the establishment of the VMware Asia Institute (VMware Labs Asia). The VMware Asia Research Institute is part of the VMware Pacific and Japan region, led by Li Ying, general manager of VMware Asia Institute, Global VP of VMware, and the first project of the VMware Asia Institute is to develop a Linux based VDI solution To meet the unique needs of China's open source technology market.

It is reported that the VMware Asia Institute will further enhance VMware's influence in the technology ecosystem through collaboration with Chinese academia, developers, open source technology and partner communities. As part of China's strategy, VMware is planning to inject 1 billion U.S. dollars in China over the next five years, dedicated to technology development and innovation in the Chinese market, which shows VMware's attention to the Chinese market. At the vForum2014 meeting, csdn the opportunity to interview Dr. Li Ying to unlock the mystery of the VMware Asia Institute. The following is the original interview:

Q: VMware's plan to inject $1 billion trillion into China in the next five years, which investment direction will be included? Some of the money comes from partners, and how do you plan to spend it?

Li Ying: 1 billion dollars is VMware's overall investment in China over the next few years. The scope of investment mainly includes three aspects: one is the investment in the sales expansion market; In addition, the existing global research and development Center will increase the number of research and development, scale and technology, and finally the investment of the Asian Institute. In general, the overall direction of investment is to achieve the long-term development of VMware in China in the future.

We will determine the direction of investment according to the different nature of the partners. If it is a technical partner, including implementation, systems integration partners, and more through the Asian Institute of Cooperation. These three aspects of the investment is not independent, more than three teams together, a bit like VC or the feeling of investment, we together determine the next 3-5 five years VMware in China's development of the most important aspects, together explore which direction worthy of cooperation, is such a model of investment cooperation.

Q: This kind of investment is similar to IBM's ecosystem, and IBM does it around the world, but it is not a direct investment, it will introduce some investment. How do you think this investment is different from VMware?

Li Ying: IBM organizes more and more, has the specialized investment department to invest. VMware is a growing company, more importantly, we will work together to explore the following issues: first, the future direction of investment; second, the best way to collaborate-is a model like IBM or Intel, a model for common development partners, or a model for developing and selling together, This is decided in different directions, not that we decide on the mode of cooperation before we invest. But a model to explore together.

Asia Institute and Research and Development center

Q: What is the relationship between the sales team and the research team of the Asian Academy and what is the future working model of the Asian Academy?

Li Ying: The Asian Institute is a new investment, why do we want to do the Asian Research institute this thing? This is actually about the current trend. In terms of GDP, manpower and IT spending, China's demand is growing. Especially in the next it wave, a mixture of cloud, software definition data center and many other needs emerged, has evolved into a need to integrate with local customers, the local market to develop a function for the Chinese market, and then spread to the global process.

The Asia Institute also compensates for the lack of market expansion and performance requirements for both the sales and research teams. The Asian Research Institute's team first is aimed at the Chinese market, second with the Chinese market close cooperation, provides the Chinese market cooperation way, the technology development, the new product development and so on service. The Asian Academy has built three bridges for us: The first bridge connects the research and sales teams; the second bridge connects some technical teams from the Chinese market to the headquarters, and the third bridge combines VMware with our customers, which is a big background.

The Asian Institute has several different places from our research and Development Center: the first is that the focus is different, research and development team, research and Development Center to do is the global research and Development, the Asian Research Institute is aimed at the Chinese local market research and development, in addition, the work of different ways, the global research and development team is more traditional internal research and development model, PM team to identify performance requirements based on market requirements, and then in our in-house research and development through the sales team to promote to the market. Second, the Asian Institute was a completely open model from the beginning, with the start of the VDI project, we started with the collection of market demand, including cooperation with universities, open source community cooperation, we put open cooperation in the first place, rather than the internal development in the first place.

The Asian Academy is not an isolated team, and it is important for us to work on how to integrate the resources of the sales team with the resources of the research and development team in China's strategic direction, which is another bridge role for the Asian Academy.

Q: The Chinese research and development team is closer to the user, but you have more contact with the research unit, which feels that there is no more grounding in China's research and development center. What do you think of this?

Li Ying: I think the global research and development team in China generally has two functions: one function is global technology development and research. In the case of end-user computing, what are the key features of the world, how many are developed by the Chinese team, how many are developed by the U.S. team, how many are Indian team development, perhaps in the middle of the assignment or in the decision of the project will have some consideration, is that the majority of customers of this product may be in China, I may be closer to China, most of the things in India may rely on India, but in fact these are second, and more importantly, the talent and technical capacity is where? If the majority of the product's technical capabilities are in India, maybe this feature is developed for the United States or developed for China but I want the Indian team to do it, and vice versa, this may be mostly to the United States, but I can have relatively good technical talent in China so I do in China. This is the model of most multinational research and development centers, so part of the global research and development, but also part of the local market with customers. But most multinationals have a much higher proportion of the first part. But how to balance these two different needs is a challenge for all multinational companies.

So, the Asian Institute wants to change this model, first we do not regard "grounding gas" this matter is the minor, therefore we set up a specialized team. We know these projects are important to the Chinese market, three to five years later we haven't developed anything to the VDI project, for example, if we don't develop it next year, if it's hard to find someone in the traditional mode, the sales market says I've developed the demand, and the global research and development is saying I have more importance, In this new model, the Asian Institute is the team that advocates responsibility to people, and the second Asia Institute as a coordinated organization to ensure that China's projects are valued and continuously promoted. This means that there is a need for labs Asia in addition to the research and development Center.

Q: What are the future plans for VMware's collaboration with virtual machines and container technologies?

Li Ying: From my personal understanding, is VMware's virtual machine and docker a choice between the two? Not。 If you stand in the process of IT operations, you will prefer the virtual machine, because it is closer to the infrastructure and operations. But you see Docker or other container are actually closer to developers and developers. It is much easier to see whether the development process is simpler, and whether the second future is simpler to deploy in my own environment in a mixed cloud or in a future public cloud. But in fact, especially in the enterprise environment, I am the IT leader, what is my it architecture for me? The first is to apply, but I have the application how to let future operations management well? So I think container or virtual machine is a process can coexist, the future development of technology is that we can not be able to combine the virtual and container technology better. On the one hand to developers in a very simple and convenient way to develop, whether it is VMware or other cloud architecture, more importantly, after deployment to better management, maintain the IT department like security, mobility, this is the future direction of development.

Q: The Asia Institute is based on VMware's three major strategies, how big is the open source component?

Li Ying: From the perspective of the Asian Research Institute, Open source is actually a very important direction of the Asian Research Institute in China. There are two reasons, the first China Open source technology to promote the rapid development, but in fact, many manufacturers need to work together. In addition, it can be expected that in the near future, there will be some China's own open source. How to see, how to find this thing the future of technology, how to combine these technologies with VMware products, in fact, is a very important direction of the Asian Institute, which is why the Linux VDI to build relationships with open source. We hope that through this project or other projects with the open source community is not only a technical exchange platform, more is the platform for future cooperation.