With VMware Cloud, customers can choose the best cloud environment for their ever-evolving business and application needs because VMware’s multi-cloud architecture is extensible to a broad range of cloud endpoints. Case in point, Equinix Metal in prime metro locations around the world!
Today at VMware Explore Vegas 2023, we are excited to announce that VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal (VMCE) is available as an Early Access Release, and several customers are participating in the Beta Program. Later this year, we plan to make the solution available to a broader set of customers as part of the Initial Availability Release targeted for Q4 calendar year 2023.
You may remember that in November 2022 at VMware Explore Barcelona, VMware and Equinix announced an expanded global partnership to deliver new digital infrastructure and multi-cloud services and shared a Tech Preview of VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud/2022/11/08/introducing-vmware-cloud-on-equinix-metal/
The buzz and excitement around this solution has continued to gain momentum, because VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal delivers a cloud choice point for customer where data locality matters!
As IDC reinforces in their Spotlight Paper1 the next era of cloud will be defined by data gravity, distribution, and portability. And this trend will only accelerate as models, such as generative AI, are further developed with ever-larger data sets. A distributed cloud strategy gives customers choice when weighing the diverse needs presented by complex, data-intensive workloads, including latency, sovereignty and the size and cost involved with maintaining these workloads.
VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal – A Distributed Cloud Service
For data-rich applications that rely on low latency and high-performance network bandwidth to satisfy application response times and are under strict regulatory mandates, enterprises have struggled to find a no-compromise cost-effective solution. The default has been to retain workloads on-premises or perform real-time needs, such as data processing, at duplicate branch office or metro locations. But managing data centers and replicated edge environments adds cost and complexity when what’s needed is cloud-like efficiency.
VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal is a new distributed cloud service that delivers a performant, more secure, and cost-effective solution for these data-intensive and data-sensitive enterprise applications when data locality matters. Traditional database workloads, such as SQL, Oracle and SAP, are a good fit because they are latency sensitive and mission-critical, and this solution offers an efficient cloud model without compromising on performance, cost or compliance. VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal is also well suited for near edge workloads such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), providing proximity to end users with low response times, and ML/Inference on data generated at the edge using cloud-trained models leveraging high-speed access to cloud native services.
The solution combines VMware Cloud infrastructure as-a-service with Equinix Metal hardware as-a-service to extend customers’ multi-cloud environments into distributed metro locations, delivering data proximity to satisfy business-critical performance demands and data residency to meet compliance requirements.
Customers recognize the unique value
Interest in the VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal solution spans industries, because every company has a set of applications that fit the data profile for a distributed cloud service. For the Early Access Release there are several customers evaluating a new distributed cloud option in their multi-cloud journey:
- A retailer in 200+ locations and growing rapidly, needs to standardize systems across the entire enterprise and retail systems. VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal is an interesting solution because it can serve the distributed locations without needing to replicate the infrastructure across each physical store. The retailer will be able to consolidate onto VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal and deliver it as a cloud service to all store locations. In so doing, it will remove infrastructure management headaches and drive cost efficiencies, but more importantly deliver the expected performance because of the low latency of the VMCE solution located in prime metropolitan areas.
- A US healthcare company needs to provide access and data to 1000s of Virtual Desktop users while also meeting regulatory and compliance mandates given the privacy protection of the patient data. The company is handling large and confidential data sets but needs extremely low latency to satisfy user demand for improved performance. The VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal solution would give them the ability to evolve their Equinix Colo footprint into a fully managed cloud service for their critical databases, preserving data proximity for performance, meeting regulatory mandates and in addition taking advantage of improved cloud economics.
- A global financial services company needs to establish a multi-cloud strategy capable of meeting regulatory, security, and data sovereignty requirements on a global basis and, in parallel, have the ability to scale and support massive amounts of transactions quickly in financial hubs around the world. VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal is appealing because it is a cloud service that helps them better manage costs and more securely manage control over the environment and additionally enables application owners to deliver against the performance needs of these transactionally intensive financial applications.
Equinix Metal is available in over 25 of the most interconnected global Equinix locations, connected to all major public clouds and networks, and can deliver <10ms latency to 80% of the US metropolitan population.2
Customers interested in the VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal solution will be able to purchase the VMware Cloud IaaS software from VMware and the bare metal-as-a-service capacity from Equinix, which will be combined into a fully managed cloud service.
Click here to learn more about VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal.
Sources:
- the IDC Spotlight, sponsored by VMWare, The Next Era of Cloud Will Be Defined by Data Gravity, Distribution and Portability (doc #US51117523, August 2023)
- <10ms Latency: https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2022/04/06/are-social-media-companies-getting-into-the-data-center-business/
Author Bios
Oren Root is a Senior Director of Product Management at VMware, leading VMware Cloud solutions for Equinix Metal and Hyperscalers. With a background that includes leadership roles at Google’s Distributed Cloud, Oren brings a deep understanding of cloud and edge technologies.
Jason serves as the Global Head of Edge Infrastructure Services at Equinix, where he leads the strategy and critical product decisions. He has also held leadership roles at Teradata, founded and led several startups, led acquisitions for a real estate private equity fund, and served as a consultant for Bain & Company advising fortune 500 companies.
