VMware announces new features in VMware Cloud, Dell EMC integrations

VMware has announced advancements to VMware Cloud that further the company's vision for delivering a digital foundation to support customers' and partners' digital transformation.

These advancements include updates to VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware vCloud Director, and CloudHealth by VMware, and increased access to Cloud Foundation-based services via new VMware Cloud on AWS regions in Canada, Paris, and Singapore, and more VMware Cloud Verified partners globally.

Every organisation is on a multicloud journey.

According to Gartner, "By 2020, 75% of organisations will have deployed a multicloud or hybrid cloud model."

This journey is being supported by two primary cloud strategies: hybrid cloud and native public cloud.

While each approach is unique, they are complementary, and most often exist simultaneously within the same customer.

Each path is intended to open new opportunities for a business in a way that is differentiating, and to deliver tangible business outcomes.

Looking for the best path forward on this multicloud journey, VMware's research shows that 83% of cloud buyers are seeking consistent infrastructure and operations from the data center to the cloud.

VMware Cloud Foundation is a hybrid cloud that expands the definition of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) by unifying the essential cloud infrastructure capabilities of compute, storage, networking and integrated cloud management.

Cloud Foundation is a full-stack solution delivering infrastructure and operations to help customers modernise their data centers, migrate applications and entire data centers to the cloud, scale on-demand for disaster recovery, global expansion and seasonal spikes, and deploy next-generation applications in modern data center environments.

VMware announced VMware Cloud Foundation 3.7 is expected to be available on Dell EMC VxRail in VMware's Q1FY20, offering customers a jointly engineered, hybrid cloud infrastructure stack integrated with VMware's flexible, full stack HCI architecture, ready for line-of-business applications.

Cloud Foundation on VxRail demonstrates the tight integration between Dell EMC and VMware, incorporating unique, jointly-engineered features that simplify and streamline operations, and deliver full stack, end-to-end lifecycle management, through an automated hardware-through-software management experience.

Additionally, the new Cloud Foundation 3.7 release supports fully automated deployment of VMware Horizon 7 virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

Cloud Foundation accelerates the delivery of Horizon 7 benefits by providing complete infrastructure automation for Horizon 7 environments, including the installation of Horizon 7, App Volumes, User Environment Manager, and Unified Access Gateway.

Cloud Foundation is the foundation for cloud infrastructure as a service from VMware and VMware Cloud Verified partners as well as forthcoming VMware-managed SDDC as-a-service offerings for on-premises and edge.

VMware announced the expanded global availability of Cloud Foundation-based services from VMware and its partners, including:

• More VMware Cloud on AWS Regions: VMware Cloud on AWS is powered by Cloud Foundation, and is delivered, sold and supported by VMware and its partners. With the addition of the AWS Canada (Central), AWS EU (Paris), and AWS APJ (Singapore) regions VMware Cloud on AWS is now generally available in 13 AWS regions globally. VMware and AWS continue to work to bring the service to major AWS regions worldwide by the end of calendar year 2019.
• More partners offering services for VMware Cloud on AWS: there are more than 60 partners building or delivering managed service offerings for VMware Cloud on AWS, and more than 280 partners have achieved the VMware Cloud on AWS Solution Competency, less than one year from the launch of the VMware Cloud on AWS partner program.
• More VMware Cloud Verified Partners: VMware now has 35 VMware Cloud Provider Program partners that have achieved Cloud Verified status. VMware Cloud Verified partners are a set of strategic partners offering a complete VMware SDDC as a service as well as value-added services and support from their data centers via Cloud Foundation. The Cloud Verified trust mark gives enterprises confidence their cloud provider offers the most complete and advanced VMware technologies, with consistent infrastructure and operations across clouds.

Collectively, VCPP partners serve more than 150,000 customers with millions of VMs deployed.

These customers benefit from a robust, differentiated set of enterprise-class clouds using the latest VMware innovations to simplify hybrid cloud adoption and management with consistent infrastructure and new cloud services.

The new VMware vCloud Director 9.7 release will allow cloud providers to further differentiate their hybrid cloud offerings and deliver new services through centralised global cloud management, expanded scalability, and an enhanced extensibility framework.

The vCloud Director platform will unify private and multi-tenant cloud management across a cloud provider's global footprint of VMware-based environments, simplifying monitoring and management from on-premises vSphere environments to multi-tenant provider clouds.

The updated extensibility framework will enable cloud providers to offer new, differentiated services on their multi-tenant platform from industry-leading third-party solutions from ecosystem partners such as Cohesity, Dell EMC and Rubrik.

The new VMware vCloud Availability 3.0 will unify onboarding, migration and disaster recovery services to and between multi-tenant clouds, helping cloud providers offer new availability services with compelling economics.

The native integration with vCloud Director and a modern user interface will provide a simple customer experience for rapid service delivery and management.