Five years ago, when he would go to conferences, Don Sullivan, database specialist solution architect at VMware, Inc., would ask attendees who was virtualizing their applications and databases. He said that a few people would raise their hands. At the EMC World event this week, he asked the same question and saw a veritable sea of raised hands.

“I couldn’t see anybody who hadn’t, but I wasn’t looking that hard,” he said.

Sullivan told Stu Miniman (@stu) and John Walls, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, that his motto is, “No application left behind.” He said he’s seen a huge increase in virtualization, and there’s no limit to how much further it can go.

“With vSphere 6 and the capabilities of a single VM going up to 128 virtual CPUs and four terabytes of memory, it is truly a fact that every application and database in existence is a candidate for virtualized infrastructure,” he said. vSphere 6 is VMware’s virtualization solution for the hybrid cloud and foundation for the software-defined data center.

The expanding cloud world

The story of all the companies clamoring to get in on cloud is one of competition and “coopetition.” Sam Lucido, technology director of global database marketing at EMC, also joined the interview on theCUBE, saying, “I really like the fact that Oracle has switched the conversation to cloud.”

He said the tech giant throwing its hat in the ring can only raise the profile of other cloud providers by association.

“I think we could be very competitive with Oracle,” he said, adding that, “Oracle claims to have these optimizations for the cloud, but I call Oracle the silo cloud — it only works with Oracle.” He said that EMC’s more “holistic” approach could give it an advantage.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of EMC World 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE