Major announcements from VMworld 2019 Europe
VMware made several major announcements at VMworld 2019 Europe in Barcelona. Its new offerings and strategic partnerships reinforcing the company’s vision of a software architecture that enables any cloud, on any application, to any device.
During the general session keynote, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger highlighted the unprecedented growth in applications and the complexity in delivering and managing them. VMware helps customers to harness this chaos for business advantage, he said.
“VMware’s vision remains the same – enabling our customers to operate any application, on any device, from any cloud. With cloud as the foundation, we’re transforming the app experience and providing intrinsic security for your data,” said Gelsinger. “We are redefining what’s possible.”
VMware works with its customers and partners to deliver next generation application experiences built on cloud, networking, security, digital workspace and 5G technologies.
Intrinsic security solutions
VMware detailed new and expanded security solutions to advance its intrinsic security vision, making it more automated, active and pervasive. This includes the announcement that Carbon Black Cloud will be the preferred endpoint security solution for Dell customers.
Further, VMWare App Defence and Vulnerability Management products will merge with several modules acquired through the Carbon Black acquisition.
Its acquisition of Pivotal is set to be completed by the end of the year, which is good news on the build side. While its role in Project Galleon will see the speedy delivery of an app catalogue with greater security being key.
A new NSX Distributed Intrusion Detection and Prevention and NSX Federation were also announced. Plus, its SD-WAN branch firewall performance, flexibility and usability features will be enhanced. Secure State will be updated to reduce public cloud risk and improve security posture and zero trust security architecture for the digital workspace will be implemented.
“VMware believes we have to stop adding more and more complexity in an effort to solve cyber security challenges, and instead use our infrastructure as part of the solution. In short, we must make security intrinsic,” said Sanjay Poonen, chief operating officer, Customer Operations, VMware.
“VMware is shifting the balance of power from attackers to defenders by removing the complexity inherent with cybersecurity. VMware is delivering intrinsic security through a comprehensive portfolio spanning the critical control points of security: network, endpoint, workload, identity, cloud, and analytics. Because we’re built-in, we’re everywhere apps, devices, and users reside. This gives us a unique vantage point to be informed about what’s happening in a customer’s environment. With this knowledge, we can be proactive in hardening customers’ environments to better prevent threats.”
Support for Kubernetes adoption
The vendor’s Tanzu portfolio of products and services, which transform how enterprises build, run and manage Kubernetes, will expand further. The advancement of Tanzu, which was initially announced in August at VMworld US, hopes to accelerate enterprise adoption of Kubernetes.
VMware unveiled a beta programme for both Tanzu Mission Control and Project Pacific.
Tanzu Mission Control manages conformant Kubernetes clusters from a single control point regardless of where they are running. Operators will be able to set policy for access, back-up, security and more to individual clusters or groups of clusters across environments. Developers will be able to access Kubernetes resources via APIs in a self-service manner.
Project Pacific unifies VMware vSphere and Kubernetes. It will enable VMware vSphere administrators — using the tools they already know — to deploy and manage Kubernetes and container infrastructure anywhere VMware vSphere runs—on-premises, in a hybrid cloud, and on hyper-scalers. Plus, developers can manage application services and deployment using the Kubernetes tools they are already familiar with.
Referencing the integration of Kubernetes with vSphere and NXS cloud control and management systems around containers, Gelsinger said that while it is key, it is not simple: “It’s more like jazz improvisation rather than simple container orchestration.”
Project Pacific will include both fully integrated container networking; which can dramatically simplify Kubernetes implementation, deployment and management, and integrated cloud native storage; which can enable developers to provision vSphere-supported storage on-demand.
“Customers have responded positively to our holistic vision for VMware Tanzu and Project Pacific,” said Ray O’Farrell, executive vice president, VMware. “There is demand for solutions, services, education and training to help customers harness the full potential of Kubernetes and successfully build, run and manage their applications and multi-cloud Kubernetes clusters. That demand has resulted in overwhelming customer response for participation in beta programs for both Project Pacific and the VMware Tanzu Mission Control.”
Details of a new VMware Cloud Native Mater Services Competency were outlined. This will enable partners to engineer a Kubernetes-based platform supported by complementary technologies from the cloud native ecosystem for continuous application delivery.
Migration, modernisation of apps with VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware has expanded its VMware HCX capabilities to include OS-assisted migration. This will allow customers to migrate non-vSphere workloads such as applications running in RedHat OpenStack/KVM, and Microsoft Hyper-V environments to VMware Cloud on AWS.
Further, its new VMware Cloud Director service was announced. This brings the multi-tenant capabilities of VMware vCloud Director to VMware Cloud on AWS, allowing Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to share VMware Cloud on AWS instances and overall costs, across multiple tenants. With this development, AWS will become even more available to customers.
Multi-cloud service delivery and operations for cloud providers
A brand-new technology, Project Path, was previewed at the event. Designed to help cloud providers and MSP’s to adopt new business models that boost their cloud businesses value and revenue, Path will build on and expand the foundational capabilities of the VMware Cloud Provider Program. It will gradually be rolled out to unify management and operations across VMware cloud endpoints. This includes VMware SDDCs running in AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud; and native public clouds.
In his keynote, VMware CEO, Pat Gelsinger, said: “Technologists who own the multi-cloud will own the next decade.”
Telco cloud orchestrator Project Maestro unveiled
Also previewed at the event was Project Maestro; a telco cloud orchestrator designed to help communications service providers (CSPs) to accelerate multi-cloud operational agility. It will deliver a unified approach to modelling, onboarding, orchestrating, and managing virtual network functions and services so that CSPs will be able to build and automate network services that span across a wider variety of network function formats, enabling interoperability and optimising their operations across all layers of NFV and Telco Cloud architecture.
It will be able to deliver operational efficiency at scale to ultimately help CSPs accelerate time to market of new services, mitigate the cost of managing ever more complex networks, and improve customer experiences, it claims.
Shekar Ayyar, executive vice president and general manager, Telco and Edge Cloud, VMware said: “CSPs are readying their infrastructure to be able to deliver next generation apps and services to both consumers and enterprises with agility and scalability. This requires a Telco Cloud architecture that unifies their network and IT environments and connects them to private enterprise clouds, edge clouds, and public clouds,”
A new approach to orchestration is needed, said Ayyar; “One that is cloud-first and abstracts the multi-cloud complexity. This is precisely what we are aiming to address with Project Maestro.”
New technologies
Plans for VMware’s vRealize Operations Cloud were announced at the keynote. The SaaS solution will offer self-driving operations to automate and simplify operations management with AI/ML to shift the IT approach from reactive troubleshooting to predictive innovation. It is currently in beta.
Another SaaS-based solution, Project Magna, was also unveiled. It helps customers to achieve a fully ‘self-driving data centre’ beginning with VMware vSAN. It was designed to collect data, learn from it and make decisions that will self-tune customers’ infrastructure to drive greater performance and efficiencies. Customers can access this solution through a beta program.
Digital workspace
New Workspace One innovations were unveiled to improve employee experience and to accelerate the productivity of new-hires. It gives new members of staff access to resources such as Ethernet and a company directory via an intelligent hub.
SD-WAN
VMware showcased how SD-WAN by VeloCloud can deliver a comprehensive Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) platform.
It also stated plans to deepen the integration between the Microsoft Azure and VMware SD-WAN gateways deployed inside Azure. It hopes to enable end-to-end high performance and optimise access from enterprise branches to workloads on Azure.
Microsoft partnership extended
VMware has expanded its Azure VMware Solutions hybrid-cloud service to accelerate customers digital transformation journeys. It will deliver advanced cloud migration capabilities through VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension application-mobility software. Built on the VMware Cloud Foundation, it is packaging the company’s vSphere with its NSX network virtualisation product.
Plus, it intends to extend Azure to branch and edge environments with SD-WAN and to accelerate management of Windows 10 by introducing a combined solution that features Workspace One and Microsoft Endpoint Manager.
VMware hosted record numbers at VMworld Europe with approximately 14,000 registering for the event, up by 2,000 year-on-year. Major players including Dell, IBM, HPE, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NetApp, Rubrik, Veritas and Veeam represented at the conference.
Julia O’Reilly
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