The following post is contributed to the Cloud Foundation Blog by Steven M. Huntington, Program Director Offering Management, VMware on IBM Cloud
IBM and VMware announced an integral partnership to extend the sale of VMware solution offerings on the IBM Cloud in February 2016. This cloud partnership began by offering VMware licenses on IBM Cloud in fixed, predictable pricing based on consumption, but the best was yet to come. At VMworld 2016, in Las Vegas, IBM and VMware made a game changing announcement, introducing IBM Cloud as the first to bring VMware Cloud Foundation to the public cloud.
What is VMware Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud? We’re glad you asked! VMware Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud brings together VMware vSphere, vSAN and NSX into a natively-integrated stack of virtual compute, virtual storage and virtual networking built upon IBM Cloud bare metal servers – all dedicated just to you. This platform environment can be operated independently or as a seamless, hybrid extension of your on-premises data center. IBM has also worked with VMware to provide additional software for the platform and has integrated it all with VMware SDDC Manager. This enables a single, integrated lifecycle management capability to automate and simplify Day 0 through Day 2 activities for accelerated, repeatable deployment, as well as smoothly managed operational tasks across the board. Altogether, you get the enterprise-grade VMware Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) platform that is rapidly deployable, swiftly scalable, easy to maintain and hosted in your choice of IBM Cloud data centers around the world.
Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud, being the most comprehensive SDDC solution currently available, is the flagship offering for a growing IBM Cloud For VMware Solutions portfolio. Other solutions include add-on, complimentary services, such as business continuity with Zerto and secure virtualization from Hytrust, which are available for each deployment option. All offerings within this portfolio are available as a monthly subscription with no up-front commitments.
Among the many benefits of running Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud, we are finding that the control and security of deploying the platform on dedicated bare metal servers is significantly appealing to enterprises. Receiving a single-tenant deployment with full administrative access to both the hardware and software components provides IT leaders comfort knowing they are in control of both the underlying stack as well as the performance of their workloads. Additionally, since IBM and VMware collaborated to select an entirely compatible hardware and software stack from end-to-end, they are recognizing the value of choosing a fully supportable, standard platform as compared to their past experiences of supporting a custom, roll-your-own environment.
Also, when IT leaders are looking for options to host production workloads in the cloud, we are finding they are not eager to incur the time and effort to transform the workloads, retrain staff, or incur the increased operational costs of running multiple platforms. The beauty of this IBM Cloud hybrid solution is its compatibility and low barrier to entry, with a native vSphere platform including access to the VMware product user interfaces they already know. Whether they are looking to expand capacity, replace a data center, or modernize an application, VMware Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud provides a seamless, trusted and familiar experience.
Since we launched last year, we have been constantly enhancing and extending the capabilities to make Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud even more appealing and easy to consume. Deploying a new instance, or extending an existing instance into a multi-site deployment is now a simple three-step ordering process. Adding the Zerto disaster recovery service to your instance is accomplished with a single mouse click. And now, with our latest release we offer two different platform deployment sizes on the latest Intel Xeon processors in over 20 IBM Cloud data centers around the world. And, of course we are keeping everything up-to-date with the latest software builds VMware has provided. To learn all the details of the Cloud Foundation architecture and the latest software and hardware bill of materials, visit the IBM Architecture Center.
There are several clients who are reaping the benefits of the IBM and VMware Partnership, in particular leveraging Cloud Foundation. Marriott and Clarient are just two clients who have realized these benefits of the SDDC stack with Cloud Foundation running on the IBM Cloud.
IBM is pleased to be working with VMware on this venture with Cloud Foundation, and are eager to continue growing this strong partnership! Expect more updates soon, starting with more details around our Secure Virtualization solution and how we can help you prepare for GDPR. Stay tuned!
