VMware reported a strong fourth quarter and end to its fiscal year 2021 with full-year revenue of $11.8 billion, growing 9% from fiscal 2020, and Q4 revenue increasing 7% year over year to reach $3.3 billion.

However, its executives steered clear of the bigger questions everyone on the conference call was hoping that they would address: Who will replace Pat Gelsinger and become VMware’s new CEO — or at least how is the search progressing? And will VMware finally split from parent company Dell Technologies?

About the latter, VMware CFO and interim CEO Zan Rowe did say “I’m pleased to tell you that we are making progress on the potential spinoff of VMware from Dell while a special committee of independent directors continues to evaluate the spin off. We believe that it could be value enhancing to VMware and its stockholders.”

But no word on how the board of directors is coming along in its search to replace Gelsinger, who, in December announced he’d be returning to Intel as its CEO.

In what has become pretty routine for VMware, the software giant grew its Q4 revenue and posted an earnings beat of $936 million, or $2.21 per share, up 8% compared to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. It’s full-year income hit $3 billion, or $7.20 per share, up 15% year over year.

Its Q4 combined subscription and software-as-a-service (SaaS), and license revenue was $1.7 billion, an increase of 8% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020. Additionally, subscription and SaaS revenue for the fourth quarter topped $707 million, an increase of 27% year-over-year. This includes its VMware Cloud on AWS hybrid cloud service with Amazon, its VMware Cloud Provider Program revenue from other cloud partners, its Modern Application business unit that encompasses VMware’s Tanzu Kubernetes-focused portfolio, it Carbon Black security business and other cloud-delivered products.

For the full fiscal 2021, the combination of subscription and SaaS, and license revenue was $5.6 billion, an increase of 11% from fiscal year 2020. Subscription and SaaS revenue alone for fiscal year 2021 grew 38% to $2.6 billion and represented 22% of the company’s total revenue for the year.

And while VMware executives didn’t pull out specific revenue figures for some of the newer business like Tanzu, Carbon Black, or VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS, they did provide some tantalizing breadcrumbs to investors. For example: “VMC on AWS once again had a great quarter with both workloads and revenue nearly doubling year over year,” Rowe said.

Additionally, VMware Carbon Black Cloud bookings grew “in the high double-digits” in Q4. Previously, VMware executives have said this security unit is a $1 billion business, and it has plans to grow it into a multi-billion-dollar organization.

During the question and answer part of the call, COO Sanjay Poonen described the SolarWinds attack as a “wake up call for security overall” and a boost to VMware’s security business. Carbon Black Cloud, he said, now has more than 25,000 customers.

“The role of the chief security officer became more important in the last 36 days,” Poonen said, adding that the major supply chain breach did allow VMware to have “more discussions” with customers about their security hygiene. VMware’s security services across multi-factor authentication, identity management, network security, and endpoint and workload security give VMware “a comprehensive story that is zero trust, and that really allowed us to have more strategic conversations …  without, of course, being ambulance chasers.”

Also during the quarter, eight of VMware’s top 10 biggest deals included Tanzu, Rowe said.

Tanzu is VMware’s Kubernetes platform. Last spring, VMware added native Kubernetes support to vSphere, which provides the compute virtualization technology for VMware’s cloud software stack. More recently, it added Tanzu support to VMware Cloud on AWS with plans to further that integration into similar offerings on Oracle and Microsoft Azure.

Tanzu “is very strategic, and we believe it is a great revenue and bookings producer for us as well, so it’s part of our strategy,” Rowe added. “And with that you’ll hear us talk more about customer counts and other sort of relevant statistics as the product grows and as we continue to make exciting announcements within that product portfolio.”