It’s often said in the tech industry that change is the only constant. Even virtualization — a fundamental piece of the digital transformation puzzle that has defined change in tech for the past few years — is experiencing its own evolution with the emergence of hybrid cloud.

Jackie Sampson (pictured, left), customer success manager at SiliconANGLE Media Inc., spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu, pictured, right), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and an analyst with Wikibon Inc., during the VTUG Winter Warmer event in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Sampson asked Miniman about the key shifts driving the industry forward as technologies continue to mature.

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

This is theCUBE’s fifth year at VTUG. What’s changed?

Miniman: They’ve actually made a conscious effort to expand beyond virtualization and talk about cloud computing. Four years ago cloud computing, while it had been going on for about five years, most people coming to this show really didn’t understand it. I love an event like this that brought in … Amazon, Microsoft, had them give presentations, and they were breaking out from the ecosystem.

This ecosystem has gone through a maturation. Most of the vendors here have a basic virtualization but have grown into cloud. So we’ve seen the users, the ecosystem, and the show mature.

Who are some of the key players in the space?

Miniman: My first two guests were probably the two that have the biggest market share and are the most relevant. That’s VMware, dominant in the virtualization space, and Amazon, specifically Amazon Web Services, who is the clear leader in infrastructure services.

It is not a winner take all. There is broad ecosystem and a lot of diversity out there in the ecosystem. There’s lots of virtualization that isn’t VMware; there’s lots of cloud activity that’s happening, both of them. They’ve done really well in balancing their ecosystem. A lot of change going on there.

What are the common themes in the virtualization space that companies should start paying closer attention to in 2019?

Miniman: When I look back to 2018 and continue here in 2019, change really defines our industry today. When we talk about going from virtualization to cloud, we understand that that’s going to have some disruption. I had a guest on today; he used to do virtualization, but in his day job today all he does is AWS, and he does coding with PHP and helps build out. Their company does hair and massage but for senior citizens only. It’s a nice niche, and understanding the technology underneath that helps them at all of their locations.

The common theme is it’s a great time to be in technology. There’s a lot of change going on, and there’s great opportunities at events like this and training material for people to learn and grow and keep themselves relevant and keep their business moving.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the VTUG Winter Warmer event.

Photo: SiliconANGLE