3224: Omnissa and the Future of Unified Digital Workspaces

[00:00:04] What does it take to truly unify the digital employee experience, all while navigating complexity, security and innovation at a massive scale? And today I'm going to be joined by Tommy Walker. He's partner CTO at a company called Omnissa.

[00:00:22] And with a career that spans roles at VMware, Citrix and Cisco, Tommy brings a hands-on perspective shaped by decades of experience across consulting, virtualisation and enterprise IT. But this isn't a conversation today that's filled with buzzwords or empty promises. I want it to be about practical strategies for real world change.

[00:00:48] So Tommy's going to be sharing how Omnissa is helping organisations tackle fragmented tools, rising endpoint complexity and the challenge of balancing strong security with a seamless user experience. So we're going to explore the company's mission to simplify the digital workspace and how AI, automation, etc. are all being applied meaningfully.

[00:01:15] Not just for hype and also explore what IT leaders can be doing right now to reduce technical debt and empower their workforce wherever they are. So how do we make hybrid work really work? And what's next for endpoint strategy in a rapidly evolving tech environment? Well, let's find out by getting Tommy straight onto the podcast now. Thank you for joining me today, Tommy.

[00:01:42] You're someone who's worked with all the big names in tech from Microsoft, Cisco, VMware and Citrix. But for people hearing you for the first time today on the podcast, can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. So I'm a 21 year veteran of VMware Broadcom now Omnissa and pretty excited to be here. And my role has transitioned to become our partner CTO.

[00:02:07] So I'm working very heavily with all of our partners from resellers, service provider and all of our tech partners like IGEL, which is one of the reasons why I'm at the conference. Not only to meet with all the partners that are attending, but also support IGEL as we move forward under several different endeavors. Fantastic. And as you said, you're now a partner CTO at Omnissa. So can you tell me a bit more about what brought you to this role and how your mission actually aligns with the evolution of the digital workspace that we're talking about here at the event? Absolutely.

[00:02:35] So I got my start in the partner community. I read for college and I worked for a couple of different resellers. I actually owned my own reseller for a number of years before I decided to actually transition over and work for a software company. So I started my career then after at Citrix and then moved over to VMware. And I've always really enjoyed working with the partner of the channel because they bring an entire solution around everything. We have a piece of the software, a piece of the framework around our platform. It's very critical, but you still need somebody to bring it all together. And then that's really the important part about this is we look at this.

[00:03:05] There's the networking aspect. There's the security aspect. There's the devices. All of these things come together to provide that entire solution. So we've got a great framework, an AI-driven platform that allows us to manage and deliver amazing content out to them and manage the applications. But it's really somebody working there with the relationships. And there was someone on the main stage with Barath that talked about we save lives in IT. And it's like fundamentally, that's what we need to do. We just need to enable employees to do their best in whatever area they're working in.

[00:03:35] And so that's what we try to do. We strive to make a phenomenal, easy user experience. We try to make it really easy to bring new technology to everyone. And that in partnership is kind of why I'm here and why I'm excited to have my day job now partner CTO and really just transition. So I still get to work with all my customers, but now I get to bring in partners with me to complete that solution and complete the story for them.

[00:03:56] And before you joined me today, I was looking through Omnis' vision and how it's centered around simplifying and securing the digital employee experience, which is a huge topic right here, right now. So what are you most excited to showcase or even discuss at this year's event? Yeah, so it's very interesting.

[00:04:16] I mean, our platform has matured and we're at a place now where I feel very comfortable walking into any environment, any customer and looking at their landscape of devices and all the work that they do and knowing that I can help them. And that's what I think was most exciting is I'm not worried about the maturity of the platform and net new devices coming in. I actually had a conversation the other day and somebody was like, hey, can you manage a drone fleet? And I'm like, well, that's a little bit out there, but we actually could potentially do that.

[00:04:42] So not sure of the application, but kind of a crazy request that came in and who knows. But as I work with organizations and we look at how we just help them do their job, whether it's in retail and it's the device is always there and we can monitor that device and make sure that it's ready to do their work. There's nothing worse than having a device in your hand trying to do something in a remote location and it stops working. And you had no zero notification about that. Maybe it was just the fact that the batteries are going in being able to preemptively really monitor those type of things is a key piece for us, I think, around that.

[00:05:11] So and as more enterprises shift towards this hybrid and so many different distributed models, how are you helping organizations or what role do you play in bringing together security user experience and that operational simplicity in one unified platform? Because it sounds quite easy when I say that, but I know it's far from easy. Yeah, there's a lot of technology underneath the covers when I look at this. And part of it is just the diversity of devices that we support.

[00:05:38] But we spend a lot of time understanding that full ecosystem, whether it's a mobile device, whether it's a Windows or an Apple device, whatever it may be. We make sure that we work very closely, have great partnerships to understand how we can enable that technology and bringing the latest and greatest. So if they have new features or new functionality around security or performance or whatever it may be, we want to make sure we have that integrated in. But when we talk about the security aspect and the end user aspect, normally people look at security and user experiences as opposites.

[00:06:06] Because normally when you secure something, it's harder to leverage and harder to use. So we spend a lot of time making sure that we make security just integrated and seamless. And that's simply like, hey, is the device compliant? Is it where it should be? Does it have a certificate? Is it encrypted? Is it in good running order where I feel safe to do my work? So we have a lot of just checks around that aspect of it. And then we simplify authentication. And that's a big area. I mean, how many people have passwords written down or a file of passwords somewhere? Or they're using some third party to try and manage all of that.

[00:06:35] We simplify that by doing certificate-based auth. We integrate with a great partner like Okta and others there. There's a lot that we're doing to make that authentication easier into all of your applications. And by doing that, we're providing an element of security but also that simplicity in there. And then how do I find my applications? What application do I need? I can't tell you how many times it's like, wait, where was that? What was I supposed to use? And by having this digital platform and the intelligent hub, everything's right there. It's one place to go and it's consistent across my devices.

[00:07:04] Whether I'm in a virtual machine, whether I'm on my physical device, whether I'm on my tablet or my phone, it's the common user experience across all of those elements that really drives just the simplicity of this and makes for happy end users. And from a personal point of view, you've worked across consulting, virtualization, end user computing. How does all that experience collectively shape how you support your partners today? I do feel that the experiences I've had because I understand the networking layer.

[00:07:33] I understand the server infrastructure, all the virtualization components, all the different devices. So when I walk in there, I'm able to not only represent Omnisa and our technology, but the full ecosystem around that. Whether it's near the IGEL and the partnerships and think clients. I've done a lot of rollouts in my past lives around managing these devices and how do you roll them out there. So I understand how all that technology works. And I think that allows me to really have a complete conversation versus just representing a piece of the technology. And I mentioned that earlier.

[00:08:02] We partner up because we want this full ecosystem of all the technology. Because when you walk into a customer, they need assistance most of the time. I mean, they're not, their IT staffs are normally time, just administration and day to day. They're not architects. Very few have real architects that can look at this holistically and go, wow, I need all of these things in place to make this work. So I have the experience, fortunately, that I'm able to go in there and have conversations that not necessarily with my technology, but around the full placement.

[00:08:31] And I think endpoint management and digital workspace platforms are now mission critical. It's been quite a clear message here. So how are you helping IT leaders maybe reduce some of the complexity that they've got and technical debt and help boost productivity across the modern enterprise? Because it feels like we're at quite a crossroads here. And the way that we used to work is no longer relevant for where we're going. Well, yeah. I mean, people used to work, they'd go into the office, their device would be right there. You could manage it.

[00:09:00] You could secure it based upon that framework. And in the world we live in today, I mean, there's a lot of people that talk about zero trust. And it's really just a result of how we work. We work everywhere. We work on so many different types of devices. And so how can we simplify that down? Well, instead of having multiple tools that you're trying to manage and configure and basically say, hey, oh, well, I have this tool for this, this tool for this, this tool for this. Is my security parameter set equally across all of those?

[00:09:24] Do I have a wholesome where because I'm using so many different platforms and different tools by having one common platform that looks at every single device or organization? We simplify that down so we can ensure security based upon that. Because once again, whether it's a watch or a rugged device or printers or so many different things out there. And historically, it's very complex. You need a lot of different skill sets to manage all of those. And you still need knowledge of all those devices.

[00:09:49] But having one platform to go to, one console that can sit there and look at your entire environment is really a great end result for our customers. And I always give my guests an opportunity to bust a few myths or things that frustrate them in this space. So what would you say are the biggest misconceptions that you hear from maybe enterprise partners when it comes to the topic of digital workspace transformation and things like that? And how do you, Omnisa, how do you help reframe that conversation?

[00:10:18] I think a lot of people just think it's too much. And that's probably the biggest one is there's like, there's no way we can do that. And I go in and I talk to IT executives and there's like, yeah, we'd love to get there. But, and it's like, well, you're never going to get there if you don't start. And so, you don't want to, you don't want to dumb it down that far. But in some ways you do, it's like, hey, just start the journey. This is not going to happen overnight, but it's not going to take forever either. We can move this thing quite quickly through there.

[00:10:46] And I think most of them like, well, it's gonna be tough for my end users. No, it's really not. We're greatly simplifying it in the end of the day. And that's a critical piece. So that's definitely one. And then the other one is it's like, oh, well, I like having these tools because I can, I have those vendors and I can go after them. And it's like, yes, but once again, you're, you're adding complexity into your environment where we can consolidate this. We can save you money. We can improve your security, improve your overall end user experience.

[00:11:13] And those are the things that were probably, I think is the biggest myths that are out there. And it's not, I'd love to have some other great story, but at the end of the day, it is just people like, just, just start and move down the path. And they're always like, oh, well this, this tool is good enough. Yeah, really? Let's, let's, let's get, let's look at this a little bit deeper. And when we show the experience, it really is like, oh wow, you can do that. And we lived through a transition. When we went from VMware, we had all of our tools that allowed a phenomenal user experience.

[00:11:41] When we transitioned over, we didn't have all this for a while. And we were grumbling that it was not as easy to do our work. And so with Omnisa being kind of birth this past year, and now having our full suite of tools, it's very pleasant to work. It really is. So kind of fun from that standpoint. And I think some of the big themes here at the conference is secure flexibility. So how do you strike that balance between empowering users while also ensuring enterprise grade control and visibility?

[00:12:11] Once again, when we look at how the devices work, we have the ability to continually monitor them. So we know the state of the device is the device secure. We have great partnerships that can help look at some of the edge cases. But we know how your applications are running. We know if they're running well or not. We know if you're having issues with application crashes and other elements. So there's a lot there that we can just see. And having that telemetry and having the intelligence framework in the back end gives us the ability to not only monitor,

[00:12:39] but preemptively monitor and change things so we can basically help our end users drive to a better place. So I think that's a key element around that. And I think another big theme here is the community feel of everything and the importance of collaboration and partnerships. How would you define that relationship that you guys have with iJill? So iJill has been a great partner for a long time. And I love to see, I love their growth.

[00:13:03] What their vision to really kind of change from being a traditional thin client company to really a next generation operating system that allows a lot of new controls. And the hypervisor that they just announced, we're very excited about that. With some of our technology around apps on demand, we have some very creative ideas on how we can change how people work and really save some money. And so we want to partner with them closely. And we love their innovation. We love the fact that they now are partnering with so many people as well.

[00:13:30] So once again, that whole ecosystem play around us gives us a lot of flexibility. But the community is strong. A lot of people at iJill we've worked with in the past. So one thing about the IT world is you have a lot of people that you continue to run into. And it's great because you can just continue that collaboration and where they're coming from and how they're trying to do. And so it's just a natural partnership with iJill. And they help deliver our technology and we help deliver theirs. And so it's very mutually beneficial.

[00:13:56] And I think from a lot of the conversations we're having here, one thing in particular is the pace of change and how quickly things are moving right now. So with all that in mind, what trends or shifts do you think will most impact your partners and how you as a company, how you preparing to lead them through this period of change? Yeah. So once again, right now, there's a couple of shifts that are happening in the marketplace. One is end of life of Windows 10. And that's a very big one for organizations because many of them aren't really thinking about it yet.

[00:14:26] And so we're trying to help prepare them. And that's one of the things that we're looking at iJill with is like, hey, we can go in there and we can do some things, whether it's actually just changing the device, changing your platform for where your applications are running. But that's a big area for that we're looking at. The other big shift that we're seeing is just this massive move to AI and what that really means for organizations. And so we have a good story around our AI driven digital work platform.

[00:14:50] And we're not going crazy with it, but at the same time, being able to use machine learning and use the capabilities that are there to provide the insights for how applications are running are key for us. But I see a lot of organizations trying to like just jump into AI for AI sake and not really sure what they're doing with it yet. And there's a lot of concern, obviously, over what AI you're using and where your information is going. So we're helping a lot of organizations just kind of understand that because they want to know how we're leveraging it.

[00:15:16] And when they understand what we're doing and how we're moving things forward with our new kind of Omnibot and things like that, it's very exciting to kind of go, okay, here's how we're leveraging it in a meaningful way. It's useful. There's real merit to it. And we're not just doing it for AI sake. We're actually leveraging it in a meaningful way. So as we look at a lot of other organizations, there's massive platforms and massively running down this road and we're not really sure where that road goes. And so I think that's a big area that we have to continually look at and help our customers with.

[00:15:42] And for yourself here, you've been speaking with a lot of different people, probably bumped into a few people you wouldn't normally get to speak with. If you take all those conversations, all the keynotes, all the breakout sessions, et cetera, what are you going to be reflecting on on that plane ride home? What are you going to be thinking about? I met a lot of new partners here. And that's kind of exciting in my role. That was one of the main reasons I was here. And so I'm excited to figure out how we develop those relationships so we can go to market. And once again, as the ecosystem play there.

[00:16:10] So that's probably what I'm going to look at most importantly is the relationships I've kind of started to make and how I culture those. But also just as I look at all the technology that was announced, I do geek out a little bit because I'm a technologist at heart. And it's like, all right, what can we do? How do we how do we put these pieces together? Is there something we haven't thought of yet when we look at all the technology that we can innovate on? And so there's a couple areas that I'm working with my team already and some thoughts that we've had that things things that have come up. So excited to see where those go.

[00:16:38] And it's always interesting because at these shows every year, it's kind of like a milestone. Like, where were we? Where are we now? And then you look back and reflect and go, wow, three years ago, we hadn't even thought of that. And now it's just mainstream. So those are the kind of things that we try and get ahead of when we look at this and go, here are all the announcements. Here are the roadmaps. Here are the capabilities that are coming. What does that mean for us as we move forward? And that's the exciting part. Sounds like you're going to be incredibly busy. Yes. Well, we also launched our new partner program this week.

[00:17:07] It's very exciting to have just kind of the buzz around, all right, what does this look like? How are we moving forward? So it's a very simplified process from some of the legacy things out there. So excited to have those conversations with partners and walk them through that. And it's going to be big. Yeah, it's going to be a busy year ahead for sure. And if anybody's listening, they want to be checking out that new partnership program or anything we talked about or just keeping up to speed with the developments. I'm sure you're going to have a lot of big announcements this year as well. So where should people go to find out more information? I'm nissa.com.

[00:17:36] I mean, it's there and it's a great platform. It's I think we've done a great job with the UI. So very easy to navigate. If you there's a partner tab, you can go out there and sign up and all the different materials around how to become a partner and the benefits of that and are all available there. There's also a great community site. It's linked off there as well. And that's where you can just join a conversation. There's a lot of good, just innovative conversations to take place. And people are, hey, I have this challenge around X, Y and Z. And you have a whole lot of collaboration taking place there.

[00:18:04] So both with nissa employees and the partner community and our customers as well. So very excited to kind of see that. But that's where I would start. And then if you are a technologist, look for a little area called tech zone. That's where all of our deep content is that will walk you through blueprints, architecture, what's new in the product. And that's where we go internally as well. So we have a lot of good content out there for you. Awesome. So I'd like to add links to everything you mentioned there to make it easy for people to find you. And I know it's a very busy show floor out there. A lot of people vying for your attention.

[00:18:33] So just thank you for stopping by and speaking with me. Absolutely. Really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you so much. Massive thank you to Tommy Walker for stopping by and joining me during what was clearly an incredibly busy week at IGEL now and next 2025. And I think his insights on simplifying complexity, creating secure digital experiences and partnering to deliver complete solutions hit home for many of the things that we've been exploring right here on the show floor.

[00:19:02] And what really stood out for me was Tommy's reminder that transformation doesn't have to mean disruption. And that progress starts by taking the first step, whether it's simplifying endpoint management, improving authentication or just asking the right questions about what's working and what's not. And I think Omnis' approach is a timely reminder that practical, scalable change is always possible.

[00:19:29] And if anything Tommy shared today resonated with you or you want to explore more about Omnis' partner program, community insights or technical resources, just check the links in today's show notes. But what about you? How is your organization rethinking digital workspaces in 2025? Are you still managing a patchwork of tools? Or have you already found a way to unify the experience? Let me know your thoughts.

[00:19:58] I'd love to keep the conversation going on this. Tech blog right to Outlook.com, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, just at Neil CQs. But thank you for listening today. I'll see you all in the next episode tomorrow morning and we'll talk about a completely different topic. Speak with you all then. Bye for now.