Newly independent VMware will look to pursue deeper deals with cloud computing providers and consider “large-scale” acquisitions that could help the company grow, CEO Raghu Raghuram said.

VMware on Monday completed its spinout from Dell Technologies, which owned 81% of the Palo Alto, California-based software firm, to become a separate publicly traded company worth about US$64-billion.

Founded in 1998, VMware led a major change in how big companies used their data centres with technology that let data centre owners slice up physical computers into “virtual” machines that could be quickly scaled up or down for the task at hand to get more work done. VMware became a mainstay in corporate data centres.

But as big companies began to move computing work to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, some analysts predicted VMware’s usefulness would decline.

Instead, many large businesses are opting to use a combination of their own data centers and one or more cloud providers, which has in turn spurred several cloud providers to strike partnerships with VMware for better access to its customer base.

Raghuram said now that VMware is not under Dell’s umbrella, he wants to aggressively pursue more of those deals.

“This truly allows us to go out and be the Switzerland of the industry,” he said.

‘Full spectrum’

VMware will also look to use its shares as a currency for buying other companies to add technologies to its offerings.

“We are not a controlled entity any more. This allows us to use equity to do large-scale transactions down the road,” he said. “Small, hot start-ups or reasonably valued big companies — it gives us access to the full spectrum.”