During the course of a recent interview with ZDNet Asia, Andrew Dutton – VMware’s general manager for Asia-Pacific and Japan – said that China’s latest 5-year economic plan has provided VMware with massive growth opportunities.

With reference to the 12th edition of China’s 5-year economic blueprint, which runs from 2011 to 2015, Dutton said during the interview – which took place on the sidelines of the VMworld conference on Tuesday – that China’s economic plans focus on the enhancement of the IT capabilities of its home companies and the country’s emergence as a leader in the cloud-computing arena.

Noting that China is largely pushing towards making cloud-computing the foremost driver for IT industry and creating e-government services, Dutton said that with the country’s economic plan underscored a notable opportunity - involving the persuasion of domestic companies to leverage foreign technology for growth - which has been seized by VMware.

Further adding that four different strategies are being run by VMware for the Chinese market, Dutton revealed that the vendor is customizing individual approaches to segments comprising "big cloud" like services for the government; large commercial entities like telcos; government agencies and other big bureaus and the financial sector; and small- and mid-size enterprises in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.

Dutton also said that VMware had “found that the best way to deal in China is to be 'as Chinese as possible',” and added: “We have no expatriates there. We have Chinese folks and we have Chinese labs.”