With Broadcom Buy Looming, VMware Explore 2023 Focuses on Multicloud
VMware is showcasing cloud updates and innovations as it keeps its eye on the digital transformation ball.
![Multicloud at VMware Explore 2023 Multicloud at VMware Explore 2023](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt10e444bce2d36aa8/bltb909fbdf6c3ec063/6523ea19f66dd964dfa7c65a/Multicloud.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
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VMware Tanzu contains a slew of new updates that support digital transformation projects.
For starters, the platform now combines existing Tanzu and Aria products. VMware did this so users have an easier time modernizing legacy apps and developing cloud-native ones as well.
“Our goal is to increase our customers’ business agility by accelerating application development, delivery and management,” said Purnima Padmanabhan, senior vice president and general manager of the modern apps and management business group at VMware. “Tanzu and Aria are now evolving into the next generation of Tanzu Application Platform and the new Tanzu Intelligence Services. With an application-centric focus and integration through common data and controls, VMware Tanzu is providing a streamlined platform engineering and cloud operations experience, and better software agility.”
What does that look like? Go to the next slide.
We’ll break down the various upgrades over the next few slides, starting with enhancements to Tanzu Application Platform.
That product now combines innovations for platform engineering and operations with the existing capabilities of Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations. VMware said specific changes include the following:
• VMware Tanzu Application Engine (beta). This lets application teams request business requirements such as high availability, more secure connectivity and scalability. Platform engineering will be able to embed these requirements into an “application space” that enforces them at runtime, even across different Kubernetes clusters and clouds.
• Enhanced multicloud Kubernetes operations. This is achieved through new lifecycle management for Azure Kubernetes Services in addition to AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service Tanzu Kubernetes Grid and cluster cost visibility for Kubernetes FinOps with VMware Tanzu CloudHealth.
• A developer portal. This extends curated app templates and more secure supply chain automation with beta support for open source and DIY Backstage plugins.
• A new platform engineer admin console. Users may configure and operate Tanzu Application Platform capabilities and applications from this interface.
Up next, a look at new “Intelligence Services” for managing applications across clouds.
VMware just debuted VMware Tanzu Intelligence Services. The suite includes some VMware Aria elements for optimizing application cost, performance and security across clouds; it comes with integrated machine learning/artificial intelligence. (VMware Aria still handles cloud management, VMware made sure to note. This is just an offshoot for applications.)
Here’s how Padmanabhan, head of the modern apps and management business group, positioned the Tanzu Intelligence Services portfolio: “We are bringing the power of all the solutions we have around cost performance and security management together, and bringing the application context combined with the conversational AI-based troubleshooting capabilities.”
With that in mind, check out some of the features and capabilities in Tanzu Intelligence Services.
Go to the next slide.
What’s in Tanzu Intelligence Services? Check out the list:
• Intelligent Assist. This is simply a generative AI-powered chatbot that VMware says will improve operations and streamline workflows.
• Tanzu CloudHealth. This longtime VMware cost optimization resource is embedded within Intelligence Services for better budget planning and Kubernetes “right-sizing” without downtime.
• Tanzu Insights. ML/AI technology will help operations teams do troubleshooting and resolution across distributed Kubernetes, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure environments. Look for first availability sometime in the third quarter.
• Tanzu Guardrails. Policy-based automation and enforcement for AWS and Azure.
• Tanzu Transformer. This resource supports app migration assessment and modernization. Users can plan across VMware and public clouds. APIs for third-party integrations are in beta release.
Next up, a look at how VMware is supporting edge computing deployments.
Again with digital transformation in mind, VMware also is talking up its edge computing approaches.
“The growing demand for edge computing across industries is driving the need for automation and orchestration,” said Sanjay Uppal, senior vice president and general manager of service provider and edge at VMware.
As such, VMware debuted its Edge Cloud Orchestrator (which it used to call the SASE Orchestrator). Uppal called it “a powerful new tool that extends our proven network automation and orchestration capabilities to help organizations more securely and cost-effectively install, configure, operate and maintain their edge deployments.”
Here are some details on the updated tool:
• Unified management for VMware SASE and the VMware Edge Compute Stack, intended to bridge the gap between edge networking and edge compute.
• Ability to plan, deploy, run, visualize and manage edge environments through one console that also oversees networking and security.
In addition to Edge Cloud Orchestrator, VMware took the wraps off orchestration capabilities for VMware Edge Compute Stack. That platform remains in a “technology showcase” status but its aim is to help edge administrators work with VMware to develop use cases. Edge Compute Stack makes managing virtual machines and container applications and infrastructure simpler, VMware said. It further will support automated security updates across edge infrastructure, and it will allow users to consolidate hardware and modernize applications at their own pace.
Meantime, we share some interesting news about managed connectivity on the next slide.
If you’ve been looking for a managed connectivity service to provision to customers, well, it looks like VMware’s got your back.
The company announced VMware Private Mobile Network as part of its edge digital transformation initiatives. It’ll be available in the third quarter. In essence, VMware teams with wireless service providers so verticals such as manufacturing, for example, can program autonomous vehicles or oversee inventory management without worrying about building their own private mobile networks. Retailers can use the solution for needs including loss prevention and safety and security, VMware said. Healthcare users get support for IoT wearables, surgical robots and more.
VMware’s first mobile private network partners are Betacom, Boingo Wireless and Federated Wireless.
Click to the next slide for insight into Anywhere Workspace upgrades.
No surprise here — VMware has imbued Anywhere Workspace, part of the Cross-Cloud portfolio, with AI integrations. (We say “no surprise” because AI is everywhere, all at once, these days.) The technology handles tasks including optimizing employee experience and simplifying application life cycle management. Recall that Anywhere Workspace supports hybrid work by integrating digital employee experience, virtual desktop infrastructure and apps, unified endpoint management and security so a user may work from any device or location.
“Last year, we announced our Autonomous Workspace vision as a path forward for organizations to navigate the challenges brought on by hybrid work,” said Shankar Iyer, senior vice president and general manager of end-user computing at VMware. “We are thrilled to unveil new advancements for our customers that expand data sources and insights, integrate with technology partners for improved security, and unify app delivery strategy across all virtual desktops and apps. These innovations continue to progress our vision of providing the next evolution of digital workspaces.”
Additional new capabilities include app performance scores. If a SaaS app goes down, Anywhere Workspace alerts IT and employees. This eliminates the need for IT to field support tickets and keeps employees from wasting time trying to access unavailable services. There’s also anomaly detection so IT can handle any issues.
“The Autonomous Workspace vision is truly about delivering IT the flexibility to do more with less by allowing the solution to be self-configuring, self-healing and self-securing,” said Renu Upadhyay, vice president of product marketing in the end-user computer business unit. “So we announced this vision last year at Explore, and over the course of this year we’ve been delivering innovations that help our customers and IT teams progress their journey toward this vision.”
On the remaining slides, we dive into VMware’s cloud developments, one of the biggest draws for Channel Futures readers.
Finally, VMware Cloud now features a plethora of new capabilities, all added in the name of modernization, optimization and protection.
“We are continuously helping our customers drastically simplify their multicloud infrastructure and operations environment by helping them operate their clouds as one,” said Prashanth Shenoy, vice president of cloud platform, infrastructure and solutions marketing at VMware. “We’re increasing the agility and flexibility for the infrastructure and cloud operators, and providing them increased scale, whether it’s for their storage environment, networking environment or their compute environment. We are also bringing new ransomware recovery capabilities, as well as increased scale, flexibility and security in our VMware Cloud Foundation, and expanding our public and partner cloud partnerships.”
Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager of the cloud infrastructure business group at VMware, agreed.
“VMware Cloud is setting a new benchmark for helping customers modernize, optimize, and better protect their businesses,” Prasad said. “Our latest VMware Cloud advancements further modernize cloud infrastructure and deliver a single cloud operating model that improves developer productivity and advances security.”
With those previews in mind, let’s get into the details.
Importantly, VMware Cloud now combines VMware Cloud Foundation Software and VMware Cloud Services.
Cloud Foundation brings together elements of VMware’s on-premises and public cloud software into one stack for consistency across any on-premises, hyperscaler or partner cloud environment, VMware said. Cloud Services, meanwhile, simplify how to deploy and operate Cloud Foundation environments across any cloud or on-premises setup, per VMware. Look for advanced data protection, cloud-based disaster and ransomware recovery and multicloud networking and security. There also are advanced developer services, built-in Kubernetes, and access to native cloud services across hyperscalers for app modernization.
VMware Cloud is available in five editions: Essentials, Standard, Pro, Advanced and Enterprise. Enterprises choose the right version depending on their stage in what VMware called the cloud transformation journey.
From there, customers can do their own deployment and administration, or outsource those responsibilities to VMware or a partner such as IBM Cloud.
On the next slide, we get into cloud networking and security updates.
The former Project NorthStar now is VMware NSX+. It’s a cloud-managed service of NSX for multicloud environments, according to VMware. It’s intended to advance networking and security for VMware Cloud.
“NSX+ delivers a true cloud operating model by providing consistent working security and load balancing from a centralized cloud console in multicloud environments,” said Umesh Mahajan, SVP/GM NSBU software-defined networking, security and load balancing at VMware. “It’s an evolutionary add-on to NSX infrastructure teams, a true cloud operating model for multicloud. And NSX+ Multi-Cloud VPC is a next-generation VPC for multiple clouds to deliver self-service networking, security and load balancing to application teams. Infrastructure teams can ensure policy guardrails, strict isolation across tenants, application teams get cloud digital agility no matter where their apps run. Infrastructure teams can ensure policy guardrails and strict isolation across tenants. Application teams get cloud agility no matter where their apps run.”
But speaking of apps — and AI and analytics and all the digital transformation workloads — organizations need solutions for improving scale and reducing cost. VMware has an answer. Go to the next slide.
As organizations juggle ever-growing data sets, they need storage that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, and that doesn’t make operations more unwieldy.
To that end, VMware is launching storage for VMware Cloud with VMware vSAN Max. This solution offers “unparalleled” storage scaling, as VMware put it, along with high performance, capacity and resiliency, and low total cost of ownership.
vSAN Max will scale storage up to 8.6 petabytes of capacity and 3.6 million IOPS per cluster. VMware said it is designed to withstand failures across sites, hosts,and even discrete storage devices in a stretched cluster topology. It also can cut TCO up to 30% for databases, thanks to hardware and license consolidation, VMware said.
Look for vSAN Max availability in the second half of the year. Users must license this product separately from existing vSAN editions. It will be offered as a subscription, and is planned to be licensed on a per tebibyte metric.
On the next slide, we look at a couple other VMware Cloud announcements.
While VMware has provisioned Ransomware Recovery for some time now, the module now comes with some more functionality.
As of today, expect concurrent multi-virtual machine recovery operations to help reduce downtime. Soon, too, the capability will let users run production workloads in the cloud until forensics are completed and the on-premises datacenter is fortified. Expect that in the third quarter.
VMware also unveiled a technology preview of cybersecure storage that will integrate recovery workflows with native vSAN snapshots for data transfer optimizations. And Ransomware Recovery now protects workloads in Google Cloud VMware Engine.
Next, and last, we take a look at how VMware aims to make cloud operations more efficient.
To help make cloud operations more efficient, VMware showed off early availability of ESXi lifecycle management service in VMware vSphere+.
IT admins will be able to centrally manage upgrades across their entire ESXi fleet in distributed multi-vCenter environments — and do so in a few operations rather than the previous hundreds or even thousands (depending upon environment size). VMware said this will create significant time savings, and lead to simpler upgrade planning and deployments with VMware Cloud.
Additional upcoming updates to vSphere include doubling GPU capacity per virtual machine. This will support more complex AI/ML workloads, enable smarter load balancing and enhance self-service tools for DevOps engineers and developers.
That’s a wrap for our preview of the technological updates side of VMware Explore 2023. But, as with any of these big vendor events, there’s a whole lot more going on, too. Find our live and on-site coverage courtesy of editor Edward Gately.
That’s a wrap for our preview of the technological updates side of VMware Explore 2023. But, as with any of these big vendor events, there’s a whole lot more going on, too. Find our live and on-site coverage courtesy of editor Edward Gately.
VMWARE EXPORE 2023 — VMware Explore 2023, the latest iteration of the multicloud vendor’s annual customer and partner event, kicked off Tuesday in Las Vegas.
As happens each year, VMware gave journalists a preview of the technology upgrades and innovations it’s launching at the show. In some ways, VMware Explore 2023 picks up where the 2022 event left off. In others, expect entirely new takes on digital transformation and cloud computing.
VMware Explore 2023 starts, though, as none of its other annual events has — with the specter of a new owner hanging over the proceedings.
Acquisition Talk Front and Center at VMware Explore 2023
It looks like behemoth chipmaker Broadcom will indeed close its $61 billion purchase of VMware no later than Oct. 30. That date comes later than Broadcom originally hoped and after a series of regulatory holdups in different parts of the world. Even so, the vendor has cleared the last big obstacle and is working toward finalizing the VMware buy. (Expect layoffs, according to the pretty reliable rumor mill. If the gossip is accurate, Broadcom will get rid of a number of non-engineers at VMware, and could start doing so as early as next week.)
For now, though, we go into detail on all the cloud-centric updates and new developments you can expect to see and hear about at VMware Explore 2023. Click the image above to get started.
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