A recent Wikibon.org survey of users confirmed that VMware is the most popular storage, backup and recovery, and security infrastructure vendor, says Wikibon.org Co-Founder David Vellante. Even customers who don’t have EMC wish they did. So why is that, he asked Chad Sakac, VP of the VMware Technology Alliance on SiliconAngle.com’s live Webcast from VMworld 2011.

Sakac’s answer was that customers like EMC so much because it provides the highest levels of integration with VMware. Its products work better with VMware and support more of its features than anyone else. And that is not because of the financial connection between the two companies. “We work very hard to be number 1 with VMware.”

For instance, he says, security in virtualized private clouds is a large and growing issue, particularly at the CSO and CIO level in large enterprises. It has not stopped companies from virtualizing and building clouds, although it does sometimes keep them from virtualizing some specific applications in part because they cannot pass an audit in a cloud environment, but it does raise questions and create increasing concern. Eighty percent of CIOs have said that security is their main reason for not moving important applications into a cloud environment.

“So what do you think they would say if I told them that if they are running VMware on Vblock I can give them one tool that will let them pass 200 different security certifications? That is what we can do with RSA Archer.”

And, he says, they are accelerating their integration to increase their lead over the field in VMware integration.

Customers also like EMC’s ability to support different level of needs. “Whether you are in phase 1, virtualizing all the non-critical applications, or in phase 2, virtualizing mission-critical applications that have important SLAs that have to be met, they love that EMC has products that can meet the appropriate SLAs.”

Avamar is similarly tightly integrated with VMware for backup and recovery. “Suppose you need to recover a deleted file, but you don’t know when it was deleted – some time in the last four months – or the file name. You need a catalog. Avamar does that.”