When Craig McLuckie was a product manager at Google several years ago, he helped create Kubernetes, software that later became a widely used open-source tool for managing some of the most demanding online applications.

Now at VMware, McLuckie is playing a key role in the company’s efforts to reinvent itself for an era when more and more companies are moving applications to the cloud. McLuckie leads research and development for a group VMware established a year ago—the Modern Applications Platform Business Unit—which provides tools for cloud software developers, who make e-commerce, banking and customer service apps that constantly need to be updated and to handle sudden surges in traffic. Domino’s Pizza, for instance, uses VMware’s software in a mobile app that customers use to track pizza deliveries.