This blog was co authored by Neeharika Palaka.
Over the past several months, we have provided periodic updates on the progress we have been making on building the Beta version of VMware Cloud Marketplace. Today, we are delighted to announce the Initial Availability of VMware Cloud Marketplace!
The Need for an Engineered, Two-Sided Marketplace
As VMware provides more of its services natively in the cloud, there is a clear need to bring our large partner ecosystem – including our recent acquisition Bitnami – along with us on our cloud journey. VMware Cloud Marketplace is a new service that will allow our partners to easily publish their solutions in a variety of formats – whether it’s containers or appliances or even SaaS. VMware Cloud Marketplace thus evolves VMware’s partners ecosystem from a listings-based marketplace to a managed, engineered and curated marketplace.
At the same time, VMware Cloud Marketplace offers customers a way to discover and consume third-party solutions in the same way that they discover and consume other VMware cloud services. The engineered and curated experience of VMware Cloud Marketplace also delivers to our customers the peace of mind that these solutions are validated to work on their target VMware platforms.
Figure 1: A look at the VMware Cloud Marketplace catalog
What’s in it for you?
Through VMware Cloud Marketplace, customers can search for, filter through, and select the third-party solution that’s just right for them. Customers can then click to publish these solutions directly into their VMware compute environment (e.g., their vCenter Content Library or their PKS-powered Kubernetes clusters) through a simple, guided interface enabled by the VMware Cloud Marketplace.
Customers can currently deploy solutions onto three popular VMware compute platforms: VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Enterprise PKS, and VMware vCloud Director. Meanwhile, our partners get access to the wide base of VMware customers that are transitioning out of the data center into the cloud – and expect to keep using their favorite third-party software as they move.
Both our customers and our partners can enjoy features such as analytics, notifications and reporting; core functionalities of the Cloud Services Portal on which the VMware Cloud Marketplace is built.
Figure 2: VMware Cloud Marketplace includes core functionalities such as analytics, email notifications and Slack notifications
Delivering a robust ecosystem through the VMware Cloud Marketplace catalog
Of course, a successful two-sided marketplace relies on a robust catalog; and we have built just that. VMware Cloud Marketplace partners with 12 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) with solutions validated for VMware Cloud on AWS and 10 ISVs with solutions validated for VMware PKS, in addition to the 130+ Bitnami-packaged solutions that are validated for VMware vCloud Director and VMware Cloud on AWS. Overall, the VMware Cloud Marketplace catalog contains solutions that are popular with cloud infrastructure administrators and developers alike.
Figure 3: VMware Cloud Marketplace offers a robust catalog of solutions from ISVs and open-source publishers
In particular, with VMware’s recent acquisition of Bitnami, customers now have access to a rich set of workload services such as developer tools, databases, and network and security solutions. By using these building blocks from the Bitnami portfolio, developers and architects can shorten the “builder’s journey” – an end-to-end process that tracks an application’s lifecycle from setting the initial requirements to going live. Developers are free to focus more on creating a great application – and less on what’s behind the curtain, while IT can rely on a trusted, compliant solution that is production-ready.
What’s the bottom line?
VMware Cloud Marketplace solves a core problem for customers moving significant workloads out of the data center and into the cloud. Simply put: It’s an engineered, seamless way for customers to consume third-party software just as they would consume their cloud services.
Learn more about our service here.
Next steps
You can view and log-in to the VMware Cloud Marketplace catalog through the Cloud Services portal at https://marketplace.cloud.vmware.com. If you would like to publish your solution(s) on VMware Cloud Marketplace, please reach out to [email protected].
Read more about VMware Cloud Marketplace in our blogs:
- VMware Cloud Marketplace™ Beta Now Includes Bitnami Catalog of 130+ Open-Source Solutions
- Leverage Your Cloud Investments with VMware Cloud Marketplace
- Announcing VMware Cloud Marketplace Beta
We look forward to working with you!
For participants of VMworld US 2019: We hope to see you at one of the many events where VMware Cloud Marketplace & Bitnami will be featured! Please click here for full details.
