"We did that...because we really saw the virtualization wave and they had some smart folks who really understood the first wave of virtualization...We really found that the ROI story around server virtualization, extraction, consolidation - we never had a better ROI story in the industry."

The market for virtualization technology is enormous, with VMware Vice President, Americas Partner Organization Frank Rauch showing a $50 billion total addressable market opportunity for the company.

"That keeps growing, and growing and growing," Rauch said at the breakout session.

In particular, Rauch said he sees a lot of growth in software defined data centers, end user computing, mobility and hybrid cloud. All of those areas have growth rates over 20 percent, he said.

"Whether you're a distributor or whether you're a solution provider, you have to think about where you're going to spend your time, where you're going to invest, where you're going to lead your people. We think this is a pretty good story," Rauch said.

Dupler said that the major opportunities and trends he sees around software defined data center and software defined enterprises are around born in the cloud business models and a hybrid model.

"We believe the world is going to be hybrid," Dupler said. "We also believe it's going to software defined world. That story seems pretty clear...Ultimately when we look at the software defined model, we think that's what the world is going to look like going forward for bleeding edge companies today."