Speed and agility are the two key components for VMware these days, according to Mark Egan, CIO of VMware. Egan met up with SiliconANGLE Founder John Furrier and Wikibon Co-Founder Dave Vellante at VMworld 2011 to discuss the challenges in the IT world today from a CIO perspective and where VMware is heading. Egan said that the main challenges in any business have always been "how can we save money" and "how can we be cost-effective" but now, VMware has recognized that they need to address even more topics. These include: how can we enable our business, save more money and provide better customer satisfaction. Egan listed the three main challenges in IT today as follows: 1) Mobility, 2) How to bring consumer experience into the enterprise, and 3) Cloud. He said mobility is especially tricky because it's constantly changing with all the different devices coming onto the market, and they have to have all the systems and data available for all those devices. Furrier asked Egan what advice he would give to businesses who want to increase their Tier 1 capabilities. Egan recommended, "If you're starting to use a new technology, be it virtualization or cloud, start off in an area where you can learn it more, really understand it." He gave an example of taking a Tier 2 app, becoming familiar with the technology, rolling it out, getting your staff trained. Then, as you get more comfortable, start to roll out your mission critical applications. After that, it becomes a way of doing business; do everything in the cloud. He summarized it by saying, "Start small in an area that's less risky, move to mission critical apps as you develop more confidence." Vellante asked about VMware's progress on integrating mobile devices, and how they're moving from desktop-centric to mobile. Egan responded that they have rolled out VUE to about one-third of their employees, and they're also heavily using the Horizon product internally. He noted that the fastest application they have rolled out internally was SocialCast, also known as "Facebook for the enterprise." (See theCube's interview with Tim Young, former CEO of SocialCast, now VP of Enterprise Social: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo1MCs8BHXk&list=PL261D455FDDF9E472&index=1&feature=plpp_video ) Egan reported that the rapid adoption of SocialCast really surprised them. He referred back to the challenge of bringing the consumer experience to the enterprise. He admitted that they had to create guidelines for usage of this application since employees have to be careful with what they want to share broadly across the company. Egan noted that the "people-process elements" of rolling out new technology is also another challenge facing IT. Furrier asked what the biggest pain point is for other CIOs that Egan has encountered. Egan advised to recruit good staff that really understands all the technology out there, especially in the architecture area. He also said it's important to have processes in place that don't slow the company down. Vellante expressed his skepticism about security. He referred to Steve Herrod's keynote speech where Herrod said that security within VMware is better. Vellanted asked Egan if that was true. Egan replied, "Security will evolve. Every time you come up a new solution, the bad guys come up with ideas to break in." Egan recommended to protect key parts of data that are the most important, i.e. credit card info and customer info. He acknowledged that you can't protect every single part of your enterprise, so invest in those areas first.