At the VMworld conferences in San Francisco and Barcelona VMware we learned that VMware is continuing the strategic priorities it started almost a year ago. Not a real surprise as the road still has a lot of opportunities but also some bumps to take. These are some of the notes that I crafted during my visit of keynotes, sessions and such at VMworld Barcelona. While there where not mind blowing new technical announcements, it does tell about the ever changing world in which we are and what VMware is bringing to help IT business with these changes and challenges.

The VMware strategic priorities are divided in to three pillars to continue to serve the liquefying IT world. Within this strategies there are no limits, and this was also the theme of VMworld this year is (maybe no limits is not that good for the VMworld parties 😉 ).

As we learned from the keynotes the current IT world is moving from a rigid, known, limited IT environment to a more liquid, unknown, unlimited, accessible from everywhere and every device IT environment. Here new business models are needed where data and applications are presented in a uniform way to the users and the devices they are using.

These IT business models need more AND decisions instead of the OR decisions it currently sees. We don’t build the infrastructure for traditional application or cloud applications, on or off-premise, we build the infrastructures for traditional and cloud applications available on and off-premise depending on the users and application requirements. The power of AND. And this also includes for the mentioned VMware strategic pilars where cloud is the returning component in the SDDC, Hybrid Cloud and EUC for cloud mobility. Cloud in all it’s glory, private, hybrid, mobile, cloud applications and public cloud services.

Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC)

Continuing to further virtualize the data center from the compute virtualization via flagship vSphere (now in vSphere 6.0 Beta) and continue to virtualize the network (via NSX) and storage (via Virtual SAN/VSAN and Virtual Volumes). This can be done by designing and building your own building blocks (as long those blocks are on the VMware compatibilty matrix), VMware ready partner building blocks optimized for vSphere and Horizon View. Since VMworld VMware introduced another building component, the VMware Hyperconverged Infrastructure Architecture in the form of EVO:RAIL and EVO:RACK (the big brother of EVO:RAIL for cloud scalability). These are complete OEM hardware building blocks combining compute, networking and storage, and VMware vSphere and VSAN ready to go (a somewhat simplified explanation). This reduces deployment times, complexity, optimizes resources and performance for a number of reasons. Rack, cable and create a initial configuration from defined wizards and their configuration. Deploy VM’s in 15 minutes with pre-defined VM configuration blocks. Or create your own VM configuration based on your needs, security and such. This probably takes a little more than the announced 15 minutes, but still significant less time then when using your own building blocks or VMware ready blocks.
A the partner level of news, HP is introduced as partner in EVO:RAIL, networking and enterprise mobillity, exciting what that will bring from the partner eco-sphere.

End-User Computing (EUC) in a Mobile Cloud Era

This is one of the layers needed for providing applications and data that run on VMware software products. In the last year there where several knowledge investments (or takeovers) that where needed to put the VMware EUC mobile cloud strategy in the right place on the IT world map. This started with the acquisition of Desktone for Desktop as a server (DaaS), Airwatch as leader in enterprise mobile device management and the latest Cloud Volumes acquisition for delivering virtualized applications (announced around VMworld US). Next to this VMware updated it’s own product from a VDI to a hybrid VDI published application/desktop product suite with VMware Horizon Suite updates. Additionally VMware announced Just in time Dekstops for the mobile users, Horizon Flex for offline BYOD desktops and Project Fargo for rapid duplication and sharing of resources of EUC virtual machines. 

Hybrid Cloud

Cloud is everywhere. It could be that a strategic model with the Hybrid cloud pilar positioned between SDDC and EUC pilars is a little unclear as it is not a pilar on it’s own (but that is that whole AND that was in Pat’s keynote). The cloud pilar is partly for transition and partly for allowing new cloud related functionality from and outside of the VMware product groups. You can also see this a different way, SDDC and EUC are delivered in the cloud, for the cloud which cloud definition this is. But I can see that a business model and strategy requires a little more then just a theoretical term that is everywhere.
The VMware strategy breaths and revolves about cloud. The cloud is presented in services for the private (the local on-premise data center services in SDDC) and public cloud (the public accesible services and cloud applications). Around this tools to seamlessly as possible move fast from the one cloud to the other without affecting but serving the user. Users move from on premises workspaces, to traveling workers back to the office workspaces and to home. All those places have there devices and infrastructures and all need a form of interaction with the company data and applications. In the private cloud the important products are the SDDC. To move from private to a hybrid cloud VMware earlier introduced vCloud Hybrid Services. This got more body (more services like DB as a Service) and a re-branding to vCloud Air. At VMworld a new location for vCloud Air for the EMEA market was announced, Germany will offer a new vCloud Air location.
This last year the main usage of the hybrid cloud was a Disaster Recovery endpoint and testing and developing. This needs to be expanded in other vCloud services like (but not limited to) virtual private cloud (starting piont for IaaS in the cloud for old and new workloads), DB as a Service (DBaaS MSSQL and MySQL) and further using DRaaS.

The IT business experimental phase of cloud is over, now the professional phase is starting with more and more production workloads are landing on the cloud.The growth of 2% workloads in the cloud in 2009 to 6% in 2014 does not show a lot of cloud adoption, but the exceptional growth in the last year (the 6%) is showing faster cloud adaption. Are you next?

vCloud Air is not only positioned for VMware related workloads, vCloud Air is also meant to host new cloud applications for mobile devices or for legacy applications created in the own DevOps environment. vCloud air is a central platform that allows other hypervisors then just VMware proprietary. 

vCloud connector (free) as a product or integrated with vCloud Director and vRealize Automation (the artist formely known a vCloud Automation Center or vCAC) is one of the tools to move workloads from the private to the vCloud.

vCloud Air Virtual Private on Demand beta is opened. An on demand services to offer flexibility to rapidly expand capacity and to integrate with the existing local infrastructure. A workspace in minutes and within a few easy steps. Direct access to cloud services that are the same as the onsite VMware infrastructure. Just have a credit card ready. Pay per minute for the resources you use. Support for 5000+ VMware certified applications and 90+ OS.

An overview of this and other Beta programs with these announcement can be found at my previous blogpost: https://www.pascalswereld.nl/2014/10/15/vmworld-barcelona-keynote-mentioned-beta-and-early-access-programs-link-list/.

Docker containers

A combined architecture of VM’s and application containers is nothing new for this VMworld. More and more organizations are rapidly adopting the Docker platform as it allows them to ship applications faster. Whether these applications are delivered to bare metal, virtualized data center, or public cloud infrastructures, it must not matter. For IT businesses seeking to efficiently build, deliver, and run enterprise applications, Docker and VMware deliver the best of both worlds for developers and IT/operations teams. Docker integration is brought to several VMware products.

Cloud management

Management of the private and public cloud, or physical environments, is delivered via the vRealize suite. vRealize is a suite of management tools for SDDC computer, network and storage virtualization, cloud and EUC (vRealize for Horizon). vRealize is a collection partly from re-branding and new features of old known components. Application and infrastructure automated provisioning is done via vRealize Automation (formally known as vCloud Automation Center or vCAC), management and monitoring is done via vRealize Operations (vCenter Operations Management) and IT billing and cost management is done via vRealize Business (ITBM, or IT Business Management). Not just a new name but also improved visualization, proactive alerting, improved capacity planning, project management with what-if scenario’s and automated resolving of found issues. Not just for the VMware products but also provisioning and management of physical or other hypervisor platforms as Hyper-V, KVN or OpenStack clouds. 

+++ Are you ready to go beyond your current limits?

Looking to find more information on VMware products, take a start here: http://www.vmware.com/products/?src=vmw_so_vex_pheld_277.

Next up I will be drafting from my VMworld notes some posts about product demo’s and technical briefings from my multiple visits to the partner ecosphere at the VMworld solutions exchange. I will be doing (or at least trying) a series about the technologies these partners and exhibitors are offering so stay tuned.

Sources: vmware.com.