As VMware brings to market its fourth major wave of cloud technologies in six months, it’s incredible to see the pace of innovation across VMware Cloud.
Across the portfolio VMware is continuing to deliver consistent infrastructure from the data center to the cloud and consistent operations across any cloud. It is this vision that has enabled us to strengthen VMware Cloud Foundation – our core compute, storage and networking technologies – for both enterprises and global cloud services providers. And it is this vision that has driven the expansion of our Cloud Management Platform and Cloud Services to support core IT requirements like management, operations and security across data centers and cloud environments.
One of the reasons we are moving so rapidly in this area is because of the value it has for customers. Our research shows that 83% of organizations around the globe are seeking a consistent cloud infrastructure from the data center to the public cloud. (Source: VMware Cloud Market Study, January, 2018). Our ability to deliver this is essential to our customers’ IT and business goals.
Today we’re delivering new services and expanded capabilities across VMware Cloud. Here are a few highlights.
VMware Cloud on AWS Global Expansion
Today VMware Cloud on AWS service is live in the AWS London data center, serving the European market. We expect that this UK-based service will be joined shortly by the service availability in the AWS data center in Frankfurt, Germany.
Initiating service here has obvious advantages for performance and latency improvements as well as data locality concerns. But it also helps to serve our multinational customers delivering global operations for their employees and customers. And it’s a huge advantage to those businesses looking to rapidly expand to new markets without the cost and complexity of building new data centers of their own.
When we first announced initial availability of VMware Cloud on AWS at VMworld U.S. in Las Vegas, we committed to be in every major region around the globe by the end of 2018. Expansion to Europe is just the first step in this global rollout.
VMware Cloud on AWS Enhancements
We’ve also continued to expand the enterprise functionality of VMware Cloud on AWS to enhance the scaled roll-out plans for our customers.
Application Availability
Customers want to know that production mission critical applications receive the same levels of support and protection in the cloud as they had in the data center. Today we’re adding high availability capabilities in the form of Stretched Clusters.
Applications in VMware Cloud on AWS can take advantage of this high availability capability built directly into the infrastructure, without having to rewrite or refactor the application. We’re extending a proven model for protecting applications from the data center to the cloud, complementing the world-class cloud delivered by AWS. Customers will be able to have the confidence that their applications will receive the same level of availability and protection they receive today. And we do this as a native capability built into the infrastructure, freeing developers from the responsibility of custom building this into each application.
Data-Intensive Applications
We’re also making it easier and more cost effective for customers to migrate data-intensive applications to the cloud. Across our customer base we’re seeing massive growth in data. Today more than ever, data-centric applications are central to how customers are running their businesses and making critical decisions. Customers wanting to leverage the cloud for data-intensive applications are often concerned about rising costs as data volumes expand exponentially.
To help customers deploy these data intensive apps in the cloud, without significantly escalating costs, we’re activating vSAN deduplication and compression capabilities in VMware Cloud on AWS. We believe this will help customers migrate data rich applications to the cloud without significantly impacting budgets. We estimate that customers will be able to save as much as 40% of their storage costs and reduce storage requirements in half by taking advantage of this innovation.
This is just a highlight of the news from VMware Cloud on AWS. Complete details can be found in this blog here.
Enhancements to VMware Cloud Services
Along with the enhancements we’ve made to VMware Cloud on AWS, we’ve expanded and enhanced our portfolio of VMware Cloud Services.
VMware Cloud Services are uniquely designed to give customers the flexibility to leverage any cloud environment while providing consistent operations for how clouds are managed and secured. VMware’s growing portfolio of Cloud Services offers visibility, operations, automation, security and governance across any cloud. Highlights to our expanded portfolio of Cloud Services include:
Hybrid Cloud Extension: Today we’re announcing new ways to leverage Hybrid Cloud Extension for large scale migration of applications from the data center to the cloud and between clouds. Introduced at VMworld 2017 in Barcelona, Hybrid Cloud Extension provides the operational support of large scale application migration between diverse vSphere environments. Now this solution is available for enterprises to support data center migration and upgrades while also being available from key service providers (VMware Cloud on AWS, IBM Cloud for VMware and OVH). This gives customers greater flexibility to execute data center migration and extension strategies while supporting the operational needs of mission critical applications. This technology is also an essential service for establishing hybridity across infrastructure environments.
Wavefront By VMware: And finally, we’re enhancing the value of Wavefront by providing critical integrations of data sources from vRealize Operations as well as more than 45 additional integrations across cloud native platforms. By enabling Wavefront to ingest data from a broad range of new and expanded sources, we’re offering developers and devops teams an incredibly rich set of data for monitoring and managing their application portfolios. A great extension for a solution that is already core to the development and devops teams of our customers.
Log Intelligence: Our latest Cloud Service, extends the visibility and deep understanding that customers have had within the data center to the cloud. Now with Log Intelligence, customers can proactively monitor and troubleshoot application and infrastructure problems, extending the transparency that IT requires to the cloud. This deep infrastructure understanding will allow customers to continuously troubleshoot and resolve issues at both the infrastructure and application levels even across multiple regions and multiple cloud providers.
Cost Insight and Network Insight: We’ve also expanded the functionality of Cost Insight to more deeply integrate information from VMware Cloud on AWS, providing detailed understanding of the true cost implications of migrating applications from the data Center to VMware Cloud on AWS. This helps customers make more informed and educated decisions about which applications are best suited for specific environments, part of our effort to align the right cloud for each application. Going further, we’re delivering integrations between Cost Insight and Network Insight, integrating the networking cost implications for migrating between environments. Together this is giving customers a detailed and accurate view of costs during migration and as a part of ongoing cloud management.
This is just a highlight of the developments within VMware Cloud Services. For more details on this wave of introductions across Cloud Services, please read the press release.
This is a major milestone for VMware Cloud. We’re continuing this incredible pace of delivery with new innovations across the portfolio. We’re excited to introduce new capabilities and new ways of accessing these cloud capabilities. I’m looking forward to hearing your feedback on the latest advancements we’re making and how this is helping you solve real world problems for your teams and for your business.
