By Kurt Marko, Contributor

IT practitioners are enamored with the technical elegance of cloud platforms where software virtualization layers abstract physical objects like servers, switch ports and disk volumes into malleable entities that can be divvied up and dolled out to applications and users as needed. Business executives however care little for the technological wizardry and are only interested in how software defined data centers (SDDC) and the cloud can give them a competitive edge.

Part one of my exclusive interview with VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger focused on the former: how VMware has built the foundation for enterprise clouds by drilling into the details of the company’s product strategy. The second half of our discussion focused on the business case and C-level receptivity to the SDDC message.