By Abe Ankumah, VP and GM, VMware SASE and Saadat Malik, VP and GM, VMware Edge Computing
Today at VMware Explore Las Vegas, we announced VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator™. (Click here to read the press release.) It’s an industry-first offering that will create a friction-free bridge between edge networking, security, and compute. VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator will help customers plan, deploy, run, visualize, and manage edge environments.
VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator builds on VMware’s strong heritage of changing the world through software. It’s part of a revolution at the software-defined edge, which has three key features: Right-sized infrastructure, pull-based orchestration, and network programmability. It will allow enterprises to scale massively and with security, deploy the smallest viable stack, and provision with simplicity and a zero-touch approach. Our vision is to unlock the full potential of the edge with vertically focused solutions that become a standard for ease of deployment, security, and operational efficiency—driving outcomes that fundamentally transform how our customers conduct their business.
The state of the edge: Incredible growth and innovation to solve real-world business problems
Enterprise application deployments are accelerating at the edge. A Gartner analysis noted that more than half of enterprise-managed data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud by 2025. Deloitte research shows that spend on enterprise infrastructure at the edge is growing much faster, at 22%, than the 4% growth in spending on enterprise networking equipment and 6% on overall enterprise IT.
Companies are using edge computing to process large amounts of data locally to gain insights, make better decisions, and to replace fixed-function devices with software to improve agility. They also heavily rely on AI, ML, and computer vision for tasks like predictive maintenance, quality inspection, AR/VR remote ops, and worker safety.
Technology growth at the edge is often framed in terms of IT vs. OT. Operations technology (OT) teams manage, monitor, and control physical operations, traditionally using specialized or proprietary hardware. IT and OT groups often run parallel operations that do not have much, if any, overlap. OT may in fact run outside the knowledge or control of enterprise IT. This incurs extra cost and can expand potential attack surfaces with unmanaged equipment.
An edge environment is different than a traditional IT environment. It uses a pull-based architecture, where devices ask for the updates they need locally, rather than push-based, where IT deploys updates globally. The edge is local, outside the cloud or data center, with greater needs for low latency, high bandwidth, and connectivity diversity. It involves mechanical IoT and industrial IoT (IIoT) devices that also produce reams of digital data. Data-driven edge use cases trend toward solving business needs in a specific vertical: keeping remote wind turbines running, enhancing public safety with mobile edge computing, intelligently automating the factory floor.
Edge implementations must be networked and secured—the traditional job of IT—so that enterprises can gain a business and operational advantage by using AI, inferencing and analytics. IT will need to understand and have visibility into edge deployments so they can help OT teams function more efficiently to produce better business outcomes. To embrace the opportunity that comes from moving from traditional hardware to the software-defined edge, these disparate disciplines are finding more common ground.
Introducing VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator
VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator will provide unified management for VMware SASE and VMware Edge Compute Stack. Using a single console for edge compute infrastructure, networking, and security, organizations will be able to run edge-native applications focused on business outcomes. VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator empowers business units to adopt whatever OT technology they need to be successful, and empowers IT to orchestrate, secure, and network OT devices to benefit the entire business.
“The growing demand for edge computing across industries is driving the need for automation and orchestration. The VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator is a powerful new tool that extends our proven network automation and orchestration capabilities to help organizations more securely and cost-effectively install, configure, operate, and maintain their edge deployments. Building on our history of scaling edge networking from carriers to enterprise, VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator is the first truly software-defined edge solution for scalable ‘end-to-edge’ infrastructure.”
Sanjay Uppal, senior vice president and general manager of Service Provider and Edge, VMware, in a VMware press release
VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator will allow organizations to add compute and network data workloads to the edge, simultaneously. It gives enterprises the ability to operate and scale to thousands of sites with limited resources while ensuring the infrastructure is secure, optimized, and observable. The platform will automate security updates across edge infrastructure and applications to reduce risk and simplify compliance. The programmable and pull-based architecture is common across VMware edge and connectivity products.
VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator does not simply perform orchestration. Think of it as a scaffolding that allows organizations to build a massive amount of capability. Like a man-made framework that supports and encourages the growth of an enormous coral reef, VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator will allow organizations to support and grow data platforming, AIOps, federated learning, security services, telco services, and more—in a friction-free manner.
On a factory floor, for example, VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator will help companies move to Industry 4.0. While Industry 3.0 provided abstraction between industrial control systems and the hardware that they manage, Industry 4.0 will virtualize the entire factory floor. A single compute infrastructure across hundreds or thousands of components—robotics, video, local networking, and more—will dramatically reduce the number of administrative silos, reduce potential attack surfaces, and provide a single console that provides a holistic view of operations.
“Audi wants to take factory automation to the next level and benefit from a scalable edge infrastructure at its factories worldwide. Audi’s Edge Cloud 4 Production will be the key component of this digital transformation, replacing individual PCs and hardware on the shop floor. Ultimately, it will increase factory uptime, agility, and the speed of rolling out new applications and tools across the production line. VMware Edge Compute Stack and the VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator will offer a scalable way for Audi to operate a distributed edge infrastructure, manage resources more efficiently, and lower its operations costs.”
Jörg Spindler, Global Head of Manufacturing Engineering, Audi, in a VMware press release
The VMware advantage: Software-defined edge
VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator enables the software-defined edge, which is a distributed digital infrastructure for running workloads across dispersed locations, placed close to endpoints producing or consuming data. The software-defined edge reduces infrastructure to the most efficient hardware footprint. It is designed for self-sufficiency, with simple zero-touch installation and a zero-trust, pull-based architecture. And as software it is programmable throughout the stack: compute, overlay and underlay, with the goal of ensuring maximum uptime performance and quality service.
VMware was built on software-defining the data center through virtualization. We software-defined networking with VMware SD-WAN and VMware SASE. Now we are bringing that software expertise and leadership to the edge.
The intelligent, software-defined edge includes:
An application platform for real-time decisions: VMware Edge Compute Stack is a purpose-built, integrated VM and container-based stack that enables organizations to modernize and secure edge-native apps at the far edge.
Connectivity with application awareness: Customer-approved and analyst-recognized VMware SD-WAN™ can connect end users, intelligent devices and applications to the larger enterprise network securely, reliably and at scale. Understanding which workloads are running where is critical to an integrated approach. VMware Dynamic Multipath Optimization™ (DMPO) and deep application recognition improve delivery reliability.
Visibility and analytics: VMware Edge Network Intelligence™ is an AIOPs solution that brings analytics and self-healing capabilities to the network. AIOps provides companies with actionable information, including performance baselines, gleaned from the massive data generated by a global SD-WAN network.
Security – A zero-trust approach is key at the edge, where a security lapse can shut down an entire business. By combining the VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator and VMware SD-Access™ with VMware Edge Network Intelligence, VMware will provide enterprises with a single Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solution for the edge cloud. In addition to offering a full SASE solution, VMware recognizes that customers want flexibility in choosing solutions across networking and security to help them in their transformation journey. Customers can choose an integrated solution that includes VMware SD-WAN to address networking needs and secure service edge (SSE) partners for security enforcement.
Scalable operations and fast provisioning for thousands+ edge sites: VMware has connected hundreds of thousands of sites—fast—with VMware SD-WAN, VMware SASE and VMware telco solutions. VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator will bring that scalability to hundreds, thousands, potentially millions of edge components with unified management.
The role of VMware SD-Access
The press release also announces that we are re-naming the VMware SD-WAN Client to VMware SD-Access. Why are we re-branding a product that was launched only a year ago? The word “client” does not capture the full scope of the technology and the discussions we have been having with our partners and customers. Yes, it can replace a VPN. Yes, it can connect users and systems directly with no backhaul over a high-performance, low latency fabric. The software also brings a host of benefits to the edge.
For edge implementations, VMware SD-Access can be installed on IoT devices using Linux, on residential gateways from service providers, and even secure application-to-application connectivity. Bringing IoT devices into the SD-WAN fabric opens a new world of fast, secure, low-latency and scalable connectivity options for edge sites.
Today, the VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator supports VMware Cloud Web Security, VMware Edge Network Intelligence, VMware SD-WAN, VMware Secure Access, and very soon, VMware SD-Access. Over time, the platform will introduce support for VMware Edge Compute Stack and VMware Private Mobile Network.
Learn more
Read the press release from VMware Explore Las Vegas about VMware’s powerful business operation transformation at the edge
From Velo to NSX to Nyansa, longtime VMware networking customers have seen quite a few product names come and go. Here’s a quick guide to new names that were announced today at VMware Explore:
