VMware Unveils Cloud Foundation to run Multiple Clouds

The strategy is reminiscent of how Microsoft has been working to make its cloud services available for companies to use on premises through the Azure Stack, but VMware is going in the opposite direction.

According to VMware documents, the new architecture could extend the company’s current hybrid cloud strategy by more effectively allowing customers to run apps in multiple clouds, within a common operating environment. For the record, the Cross-Cloud Architecture breaks down into these two main component: VMware Cloud Foundation, a unified SDDC (software-defined data center) platform for managing and running SDDC clouds; and Cross-Cloud services, in which customers can manage, govern and secure applications running in private and public clouds, including AWS, Azure and IBM Cloud.

The VMware approach to providing that capability across multiple public and private clouds is based on VMware Cloud Foundation, a new suite of hybrid cloud software created to make it simpler to first build a private cloud on top of a software-defined data center (SDDC) that can be extended into the realm of public clouds.

VMware Cloud Foundation can be run on-premise or as a service, Farronato said.

The VMware Cloud Foundation will integrate with VMware vRealize Suite, VMware vSphere Integrated Containers, VMware Integrated OpenStack, and VMware Horizon. For the first time, organizations can now automatically provision pre-configured VMware Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) environments on IBM Cloud in hours versus weeks or months. The partnership between IBM and VMware gives us an advantage in that Marriott can continue to do what we do best but expands our reach on a global scale with trusted partners whom consistently deliver.’Analyst Perspective’IBM and VMware are making great strides to enable enterprise hybrid cloud adoption through automation, ‘ Melanie Posey, vice president of Research, IDC’s Hosting and Managed Network Services. For private cloud, integrated systems will be available through VCE, and VSAN-ready nodes will be available from Dell, HPE, and QCT.

Additionally, VMware revealed vCloud Availability for vCloud Director, a family of products that offer cloud-based disaster recovery services for vSphere. The idea is to let admins use familiar tools to control server, storage, and networking resources even in public clouds, not just private clouds in on-premises data centers. With 2015 revenues of $6.6 billion, VMware has more than 500,000 customers and 75,000 partners.

Customers who use public clouds can easily end up with workloads operating in silos on separate clouds, and find it hard to federate them for better efficiency, Farronato said. Leveraging native vSphere replication capabilities, vCloud Availability’s DR services will be simple and cost-effective for vSphere environments. IBM is a strategic cloud platform for VMware users with a growing footprint of almost 50 highly-scalable and security-rich cloud data centers across the globe.

A survey conducted by the cloud and virtualization company in partnership with The Economist revealed that customers used an average of eight different cloud platforms, as well as many applications, Gelsinger said. VMware goes on to claim that Hybrid Cloud Manager can enable zero downtime, bi-directional migration of entire applications, as well as the migration of NSX security policies to vCloud Air Advanced Networking Services.

The vCloud Air service has not emerged as a top contender in the years since VMware introduced it in 2013, initially under the name vCloud Hybrid Service.