Continuation of Any Cloud, Any Device & Any App strategy – An update from VMworld 2018 Europe

The beginning

As an avid technologist, I’ve always had a thing for disruptive technologies, especially those that are not just cool tech but also provide genuine business benefits. Some of these benefits are obvious at first, but some are often not even anticipated until after a technology innovation has been achieved.

VMware’s inception: Through the emulation of X86 computing components within software was one of these moments where the power of software driven computing started a whole new shift in the IT industry. In an age of Hardware centric IT, this software defined computing technology paved way to achieve genuine cost savings through consolidation of multiple servers in to a handful of servers instead. For me back then as a lowly server engineer, introduction to this technology was one of those “goose bump” moments, especially when I thought about the possibilities of where this technology innovation could take us going forward, especially when that’s extended beyond just computing.

Fast forward about 12 more years, the software defined capabilities extended beyond compute in to storage and networking too, paving the way for brand new possibilities such as cloud computing. Recognising the commoditisation of this software defined approach by various other vendors, VMware strategically changed their direction to focus on building tools and solutions that provide customers the choice to run any application, on any cloud platform, accessible by any end user device (PC & Mobile). This strategy was launched back in 2015 and I’ve blogged about it here.

Continuation of a solid strategy

Following on from vSphere, vSAN and NSX as pillars of core software defined data center (SDDC), last couple of years showed how this vision from VMware was coming in to reality through the launch of various new solutions as well as modernisation of exiting solutions. IBM cloud (based on SDDC) & VMware Cloud on AWS (based on SDDC) were launched to harness cloud computing capabilities for customers without having to re-platform their workloads saving transformation costs. Along with over 2000 VMware Cloud Provider partner platforms (built on SDDC) all of whom that runs these very same technologies underneath their cloud platforms, this common architecture enabled customers to easily move their workload from on premises to any of these platforms relatively easily. Introduction of technologies such as VMware HCX last year made it even easier through one click migration of these workloads as well as the ability to move a running workload on to a cloud platform with zero downtime (Cloud motion).

In addition to the core infrastructure components, the existing infrastructure management and monitoring toolset deployed on-premises (vRealize suite) was also revamped over the last few years such that they can manage and monitor these environments across all these cloud platforms. vRealize suite was now one of the best Cloud Management Platforms that could provision workloads on to on-prem & on native cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure providing a single pane of glass.

NSX capabilities were also extended to cloud platforms to effectively bring cloud platforms closer to on-premises data centers via network adjacency providing customers easy migration and fall back choices while maintaining networking integrity across both platforms. With these updates, the vision of “Any Cloud” became more of a reality, though most of the use cases were limited to IaaS capabilities across the cloud platforms.

During last year, VMware also launched a number of fully managed, born in the cloud SaaS applications under the category of VMware Cloud Services (v1.0) aimed at extending this “Any Cloud” capabilities to cover none IaaS platforms. These SaaS offerings enabled ability to provision, manage and run cloud native workloads on none vSphere based cloud platforms such as Azure and native AWS platforms. These extended the “Any cloud” capabilities right in to various PaaS platforms too enabling better value to customers. A list of these new solutions and updates were listed on my previous post here.

Last few years also showed us how VMware intended on achieving the “Any Device” vision through the Workspace One platform & Air Watch. Incremental feature upgrades ensured that support for a wide array of end user computing and mobile devices to consume various enterprise IT services in a consistent, secure manner, regardless of where the applications & the data are hosted (on-premises or cloud). These updates include support for key none vSphere based cloud platforms and even competitive technologies such as Citrix providing customers plenty of choice to use any device of their choice to access applications hosted via all major avenues such as Mobile / PC / VDI / Citrix / Microsoft RDS.

“Any App” vision of enabling customers deploy and run any application was all about providing support for traditional (VM) based apps, micro-services based apps (containers) and SaaS apps. The partnership with Google for the implementation formed and new products such as PKE were also launched to provision, manage and run container workloads via an enterprise grade Kubernetes platform, both on premises as well as on cloud platforms, making the Any App strategy also a reality.

Update in 2018!

2018’s VMworld (Europe) messaging was very much an incremental continuation of this same multi-platform, multi app and multi device strategy, adding additional capabilities for core use cases. Some of the new updates also showed how VMware are also adding new use cases such as Edge computing and IoT solutions in to the mix.

Some of the key updates to note from VMworld 2018 include,

  • Heptio acquisition:    To strengthen the VMware’s Kubernetes platform offerings (Complements on-premises focused PKS as well as a SaaS offering for managed Kubernetes in VKE)
  • VMware Cloud PKS:    PKS as a Service (managed by VMware) on AWS with support coming for VMware Cloud on AWS, Azure, GCP and vSphere
  • Project Dimension:    Fully managed VMware Cloud Foundation solution for on-premises with Hybrid Cloud control plane. Beta announced!
  • Launch of VCF 3.5:    Latest version of Cloud Foundation with incremental updates and cloud integration via HCX.
  • CloudHealth in VCS:    Integration of recently acquired CloudHealth in to the VMware cloud services (SaaS offering) portfolio which now extends the cloud platform cost monitoring and resource management as a SaaS offering with better cloud scalability than vROPs
  • Pulse IoT center aaS:    IoT Infrastructure management solution previously available as an on-premises solution now available as a service. Beta announced!
  • New SaaS solutions:    Additional solutions are announced such as Cloud Assembly (vRA aaS), Service broker & Code stream to enhance DevOps app delivery & management.
  • VMware Blockchain:    Enterprise blockchain service inherently more secure than public blockchain that is integrated to underlying VMware tools and technologies for enterprises to consume.

Amongst these, there were also other minor incremental updates to existing tools and solutions such as vRealize suite 2018, Log Intelligence, Wavefront updates to provide application telemetry data (similar to App Dynamics) from container based deployments, vSphere & vSAN incremental updates, availability of vSphere platinum edition (with bundled in AppDefense) that learn (Good app behaviour), lock (the state in) and adapts security (based on changes to the application), Adaptive micro-segmentation via integrating NSX & AppDefense, Increased geo availability of VMware Cloud on AWS (Ireland, Tokyo, N California, Ohio, Gov clud west), availability of AWS RDS on vSphere on premises to name few.

In addition to the above based on the previously established Any Cloud, Any Device & Any App strategy, VMware are also embracing different target markets such as Telco clouds by offering industry specific solutions through the use of their VeloCloud technologies, in preparation for the 5G revolution that is imminent in the industry and large telco Vodafone are helping VMWare co-engineer and test these solutions to ensure their business relevance.

So all in all, there weren’t any attention grabbing headline announcements in this year’s VMworld event, but the focus was rather on providing evidence of the execution of that strategy set back in 2015/2016. VMware’s increasing pivoting to Cloud based solutions is becoming more and more obvious as almost all the net new products and solutions announced within 2017 and 2018 VMworlds are all SaaS offerings managed by VMware. This is a powerful message and customers seem to take note too, if the record breaking 12,000 attendees of VMworld 2018 Europe is anything to go by.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, as these technology updates and new innovation is continuing, no doubt there will be additional use cases being realised, and the associated business requirements previously not envisioned being established. In an age of rapid advancements of technology that often driving new business requirements retrospectively, I like how VMware are pushing ahead with a coherent technology strategy focused on providing customer the choice to benefit from innovations across these technology platforms.