By Lynn Greiner
WHEN SHE WAS NAMED VMware’s new senior vice president, worldwide global and telco accounts over two months ago, Paula Hodgins brought with her experience in both on premises and hyperscale computing that will serve her well in her new role.
After serving over two years as president of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Canada, and before that more than a decade in various roles at Microsoft Canada, culminating in a couple of years as general manager of intelligent cloud sales at Microsoft Canada, she’s well acquainted with the ins and outs of both sides.
“Really understanding that holistic view of the journey customers face, and being impressed by VMware’s vision around this, which is really to enable any application, any device, any cloud, to be that foundation to enable the application portability, to enable a consistent experience, irrespective of workload placement really spoke to me, given the challenges I saw firsthand, working with customers,” she said. “And I think their future vision is impressive.”
“For me personally, it’s exciting to be Canadian, to be able to take on an executive role at a global company like VMware out of Canada, and to be able to lead a global team out of Canada,” she added. “And I think that’s a great maybe residual effect of the pandemic, in terms of organizations, being able to think about roles that aren’t necessarily sourced at headquarters, that there’s more of an openness to think about roles located in different parts of the world, just because the way we work has changed so significantly with the pandemic.”
Her team focuses on the top 125 global accounts and telecommunications customers worldwide, which, she said, presents her with a great opportunity to expand her experience. She believes telcos are looking for ways to accelerate their adoption of new technology so they can deliver next generation networks to their customers.
“Our telcos are really evolving. I think they’re going to help deliver new customer experiences, new ways to generate revenue for organizations, new employee experiences, all at the edge.” – Paula Hodgins – VMware
“Our telcos are really evolving,” she noted. “I think they’re going to help deliver new customer experiences, new ways to generate revenue for organizations, new employee experiences, all at the edge. So, I think it’s a huge opportunity for telcos globally and in Canada.”
At the heart of things is 5G, and Hodgins thinks we’re at the tipping point of a fully-connected ecosystem, where driverless cars, telemedicine, smart cities become a reality.
“This idea that 5G really will sort of change the way we live and work in Canada, and that VMware can be part of helping to modernize those 5G networks is super exciting,” she said.
Although her brief tenure means she hasn’t had a lot of experience yet with global telcos, she said Canadian telcos are well on their way on the road to 5G and networks capable of delivering new experiences to customers. 5G will become an enabler for the new realities that IoT devices are creating with data at the edge and connected ecosystems needed to deliver at the edge.
“We’ve been dreaming about this for a long time,” she said. “And it’s exciting to see this coming to fruition. It’s a continuation of our strategy around telcos and service providers.”
The pandemic has accelerated transformations everywhere and forced companies to rethink their timelines. Hodgins said that although the sales process has changed with the travel bans and working from home, the pace of business has continued.
“I think the team is doing a great job of adapting a new way of selling, a new way of connecting with customers, and new way of making sure we drive employee engagement” she said. “We’ve continued to be able to work with customers, to strategize with them, to help them, to collaborate with them. The demand in terms of working with customers, and their desire to want to partner with us hasn’t changed. So what’s encouraging is, I think we’ve adapted pretty well to this new style.”
“I see a lot of momentum with VMware in this telco space,” she went on. “I think there’s a lot of opportunity for us to continue to help telcos innovate around modernizing their network infrastructure, really helping them to monetize those network investments, and helping them move faster to that next generation. So I really just see a continuation of the momentum we have built over the past couple of years. I think it’s an exciting time, actually, to be at VMware, focused on this telco space.”
