Though it's by no means a new technology, cloud computing is still growing like a weed. Tech researcher Gartner expects the cloud sector to grow 17.5% in 2019, and total yearly global spending on the technology to nearly double from 2018 levels to over $330 billion by 2022.
At the heart of this massive movement is digital transformation, as businesses and other organizations update their operations for the 21st century. The biggest enablers of the cloud and digital transformation -- Amazon's AWS, Microsoft's Azure, Alphabet's Google Cloud, even software providers like heavyweight and early cloud adopter salesforce.com -- get most of the attention.
Often lost in the conversation (but a leader in cloud infrastructure in its own right) is VMware (NYSE: VMW). The tech company is far smaller than its biggest peers and growth has been solid, though "only" running in the low double-digits. But a couple of key acquisitions were recently made to help light a fire as the cloud-driven transformation industry heats up.