By the mid to late 80s, we still felt overshadowed by IBM, which was the dominant force in the computing industry at that time.

The emergence of the microprocessor, optical fiber, and affordable memory chips revolutionized computing, but established companies like IBM failed to adapt to these changes, focusing instead on outdated models.

An IBM representative approached us about our desktop product, suggesting it could enhance their server sales, leading to a partnership.

At VMware, we created a tool that seamlessly migrated workloads from physical to virtual machines, which significantly boosted our sales.

At VMware, we aimed for our virtualization technology to be ubiquitous by the year 2000, and although we missed that target by six years, we eventually achieved it.

The virtualization of infrastructure and advancements in software development have significantly reduced the overhead for starting a company today.

I co-founded VMware in 1998, creating the virtualization industry, which allows multiple operating systems to run on a single computer or across computers.

After IBM divorced us in 1990, we realized we needed to figure out how to build our own enterprise sales strategy, which was not Bill Gates' passion area.

Our partnership with IBM allowed us to present at their worldwide conference, significantly boosting our server market presence.