VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger pledged to partners and customers that VMware was committed to standing and facing forward to the future together with them at VMworld 2016.
Calling this the greatest period of opportunity, Gelsinger quoted figures from IDC that said that 20% of businesses were leaders in this new economy who had figured out that all business was digital and that core processes and opportunities would come from the Cloud.
According to Gelsinger there are about 160 million workloads being run on servers these days with more than 70% of them on-premises servers. 12% are on private clouds, leaving about 15% being run on the public cloud.
VMware’s research says it will be 2021 before we see the Cloud running at par with on-premise solutions when there about 255 million workloads will be running with 30% running in the public cloud and 20% in the private cloud.
2030 will see 50% of workloads running on public clouds, but on-premise solutions will never quite go away with nearly 20% of workloads still running on them.
The migration to public cloud doesn’t mean the IT market will diminish, Gelsinger said, “As cloud takes root, IT becomes more cost-effective and more accessible, and we believe it expands the investment in IT.”
Launching the Cross-Cloud Architecture
VMware launched its Cross-Cloud Architecture at VMworld 2016, along with a partnership with IBM Cloud and plans to extend to Google, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
The architecture is designed to let network operators manage; provide uniform policies; and secure applications running across public, private and hybrid clouds.
Cross-Cloud Architecture is available in two main parts:
- The VMware Cloud Foundation is designed to allow network operators to launch private clouds and extend them to the public cloud. It is an integration that VMware says will combine some of its existing compute, storage and networking virtualization offerings, helping organizations run and manage existing on-premises applications on both private and public clouds.
- Cross Cloud Services, announced as a technology preview, runs applications across multiple public clouds, including IBM, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google, as well as VMware's vCloud Air hybrid cloud architecture and the vCloud Air Network of 4,000 service providers.
The new Cross-Cloud solutions announced at VMworld 2016 sees the company focusing more on selling products that work with existing leaders, rather than trying to establish itself as an alternative to AWS, Google or Azure. It will also provide an essential orchestration layer that helps network operators coordinate cloud applications
As more companies run applications on rented infrastructure over the internet rather than their own data centers, providing the link to the different technologies customers use is a growing opportunity for VMware and something that it can also provide to partners like IBM.
Earlier this year, IBM and VMware set out to tackle one of the industry's most pressing challenges: extending existing VMware workloads from on-premises environments to the cloud without incurring the cost and risk associated with retooling operations, re-architecting applications and re-designing security policies.
During a presentation, Guido Appenzeller, chief technology strategy officer of networking and security at VMware and Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president, IBM Cloud said that Cloud Foundation will “automatically provision pre-configured” software-defined data centers on IBM Cloud “in hours versus weeks or months.” Since then, more than 500 mutual clients have begun moving their VMware environments to IBM Cloud including companies like Marriott International and Columbia Sportswear, LeBlanc said.
“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. “The IBM – VMware partnership offers enterprises the ability to extend existing on- premises workloads to the cloud seamlessly without the need for a major IT operations overhaul, thus greatly simplifying the entire migration process.”
Marriott Enhances Customer Service Experiences via the Cloud
Marriott International is a globally recognized hospitality company, reporting more than 4,500 properties in 88 countries and territories. The company is constantly looking for ways to innovate and transform the guest experience. By extending their VMware investments on IBM Cloud, without the need to re-architect applications, development teams have the ability to focus on innovation and preserve their existing IT investments.
“It’s more than just keeping our guests happy, it’s about helping them create a memory by
exceeding their expectations,” said Alan Rosa, senior vice president of Technology Delivery and IT Security, Marriott International. “From reserving and booking rooms, planning their next family vacation or facilitating an important business event, the process of consuming our services and products needs to be seamless and integrated into our guest’s style of working and transacting. Marriott has been able to keep innovating by rapidly launching new customizable applications that support these experiences. 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.”
Keeping it independent
VMware will play a pivotal part in the growth of Dell Technologies - the combined Dell and EMC entity – with both Gelsinger and Dell chairman and CEO, Michael Dell stressing that the potential strength of the ecosystem will help drive growth in the future.
Dell also moved to quash doubts over the future of VMware, following months of speculation as to how and where it fits post Dell’s acquisition of EMC with both saying that VMware would operate as an independent entity with the power of the ecosystem behind it.