Cloud Computing News: VMware, Celigo, Google Cloud, AWS Dominate the Week
Find out what the vendors are up to this week and how partners are impacted.
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VMware is inching closer to its goal of transforming into a software, subscriptions-based company.
The multicloud provider on June 1 reported a 35% increase in subscription and software-as-a-service revenue for its first fiscal quarter 2024. The dollar figure came to $1.22 billion.
It’s a significant metric for the vendor, which continues to shift from its hardware roots to the cloud world.
Overall, VMware showed lower profit, down to $224 million, compared to $242 million in the same quarter last year. Revenue, on the other hand, rose. The numbers went from slightly less than $3.1 billion to nearly $3.3 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet were projecting revenue of $3.31 billion.
The latest earnings come as Broadcom continues to try to close its $61 billion acquisition of VMware. If and when that happens, some employees are predicting Broadcom will sell off certain VMware divisions.
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Business Insider reported this week that employees in VMware’s end-user computing and Carbon Black units think Broadcom will divest their units.
People are reaching that conclusion by sifting through a couple different sets of tea leaves. The first is Broadcom’s history of divestitures. The chipmaker did sell off CA Technologies’ Veracode product, Symantec’s Cyber Security Services business and the enterprise consulting team — in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
On top of that, end-user computing and Carbon Black staff told Business Insider their managers have remained reluctant to discuss the future of both groups. As evidence, during a meeting last November, the head of the end-user computing division apparently confirmed that Broadcom doesn’t see the unit as important. And he “dodged a question” about whether Broadcom would keep end-user computing within VMware.
“If the head of a division says they don’t know, that means something will happen,” an unnamed source told Business Insider.
The media outlet further noted that VMware recently reorganized end-user organizations to fall under end-user leaders rather than under other VMware teams. That indicates that end-user computing now operates more independently of VMware as a whole.
On the next slide, people wonder about the future of Carbon Black.
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Consider that Carbon Black, which VMware snapped up in 2019, offers products and platforms that compete with Symantec, which Broadcom owns.
“To me, the writing is on the wall,” another employee told Business Insider. “They might sell off Carbon Black because they have Symantec, which is a duplicate.”
Conversely, if Broadcom is able to complete the VMware purchase, it could keep Carbon Black but eliminate redundant roles and offerings.
Up next, VMware, intent on its multicloud path, has just unveiled a new platform.
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Lest we conflate “cloud” with “public cloud-only,” here’s some private cloud news. VMware this week debuted Cloud Foundation 5.0. The platform serves as the latest release of the company’s on-premises private cloud technology.
Enhancements include more scalability, security, infrastructure-as-a-service support, easier deployment and more protection against cyberattacks. Find all the technical details here.
Note that the new release of VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0 works with vSphere, vSAN, NSX 4.1, and vRealize LifeCycle Manager (Aria) for cloud management.
OK, now that we’ve gone through all the VMware news there could be this week, let’s shift gears. Go to the next slide if you’re into making money off integration.
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Organizations struggling with that old chestnut, “do more with less,” need the channel’s help. Vendor Celigo is obliging with a series of updates to its partner program.
This week, the company, which positions itself as a integration-platform-as-a-service provider specializing in integrating and automating cloud applications, said it’s made some big changes for partners. The new expansions include:
• More investment in different geographies.
• Dedicated product support, technical assistance, process consulting and marketing resources.
• Joint go-to-market initiatives with automated comarketing, cobranding and lead attribution.
Celigo works with consultancies, managed service providers, system integrators and accounting firms. Most of them have expertise in enterprise resource platforms and business processes. Indeed, Celigo boasts a number of partners that include Microsoft, Acumatica, SAP, NetSuite and more.
Many of the firm’s partners start on a referral basis and then move up the various tiers until they ultimately do their own implementations. To that point, Celigo’s Fred Stemmelin, vice president of business and corporate development, said partners may build their own intellectual property on top of Celigo.
“They can also provide an advisory and consultatory service to help customers with their automation road maps and integration strategies,” Stemmelin told Channel Futures. “This works as a strong insurance policy to ensure that the implementations meets overall business, operational and technology objectives.”
All told, Celigo works with more than 600 partners, Stemmelin said.
And that number is growing, alongside Celigo’s own movement up-market. Those two inputs represent the key reasons why Celigo is amping up its partner efforts.
“As companies expand their automation use cases, we continue to look for ways to serve them most effectively,” said Jan Arendtz, founder and CEO of Celigo. “This is why we are investing heavily in our partner program.”
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Google Cloud this week launched Cross-Cloud Interconnect, a service that lets its users connect with any public cloud.
Cross-Cloud Interconnect simplifies multicloud SaaS networking and supports workload migration among clouds, per Google Cloud.
Indeed, such capabilities are long overdue within the public cloud sector. Each provider’s platform runs on proprietary program and offers different features, and the platforms do not inherently play nicely together.
But as most organizations use more than one public cloud environment, technology such as Cross-Cloud Interconnect has become an imperative. (For example, earlier this year, Flexera found that 87% of its respondents use multiple clouds.) Customers require interoperability, even if providers may not be the biggest fans of the idea.
So far, Google Cloud Cross-Cloud Interconnect works with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Alibaba Cloud. The world’s third-largest public cloud provider said it will add more cloud vendors as customers request.
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AWS has made Amazon Security Lake, announced in preview last December, generally available.
The service centralizes security data from AWS environments, SaaS providers, on-premises and cloud sources into one data lake stored in each customer’s AWS account. This allows users to aggregate, normalize and store data. That way, they can respond to security events faster and simplify security data management across hybrid and multicloud environments, AWS said.
AWS said more than 55 partners integrate with Amazon Security Lake. Some of those names include CrowdStrike, Datadog, SentinelOne, Splunk and Wiz.
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Behemoth consultancy Capgemini is going all-in on generative AI with Google Cloud.
The companies have teamed for some time. They’re now turning their attention, and expanding their partnership, to focus on data analytics and artificial intelligence. They plan to launch a global Generative AI Google Cloud Center of Excellence for enterprises.
The CoE will serve as a landing place for enterprises to pursue digital transformation, engage with Capgemini and Google Cloud, and learn how to get the most of their AI investments. To that point, Google Cloud brings the generative AI technology to the deal while Capgemini will contribute expertise in data science, and product and software engineering.
“We will leverage our leading capabilities in business transformation, infrastructure, applications, data, AI and engineering, in an array of industry-specific use cases and accelerators, to assist clients in their digital and sustainable transformation journeys,” said Aiman Ezzat, CEO of Capgemini.
One of the consultancy’s first aims is to develop a library of more than 500 use cases. These will serve as blueprints for clients.
The partnership serves as an example of what Google Cloud believes generative AI does for the indirect channel. Here’s what Bronwyn Hastings, vice president of Google Cloud’s ISV and channel ecosystem, told us in mid-May:
“Generative AI has the potential to create new opportunities and unlock significant value for businesses, as well as for valued partners, including MSPs, resellers and solutions partners with implementation and delivery skills. Our partners will be a significant channel for bringing generative AI to customers and helping them see value quickly.”
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, agreed.
“Generative AI has the potential to fundamentally improve how businesses operate in every industry,” he said.
Photo courtesy: ImageFlow/Shutterstock
Behemoth consultancy Capgemini is going all-in on generative AI with Google Cloud.
The companies have teamed for some time. They’re now turning their attention, and expanding their partnership, to focus on data analytics and artificial intelligence. They plan to launch a global Generative AI Google Cloud Center of Excellence for enterprises.
The CoE will serve as a landing place for enterprises to pursue digital transformation, engage with Capgemini and Google Cloud, and learn how to get the most of their AI investments. To that point, Google Cloud brings the generative AI technology to the deal while Capgemini will contribute expertise in data science, and product and software engineering.
“We will leverage our leading capabilities in business transformation, infrastructure, applications, data, AI and engineering, in an array of industry-specific use cases and accelerators, to assist clients in their digital and sustainable transformation journeys,” said Aiman Ezzat, CEO of Capgemini.
One of the consultancy’s first aims is to develop a library of more than 500 use cases. These will serve as blueprints for clients.
The partnership serves as an example of what Google Cloud believes generative AI does for the indirect channel. Here’s what Bronwyn Hastings, vice president of Google Cloud’s ISV and channel ecosystem, told us in mid-May:
“Generative AI has the potential to create new opportunities and unlock significant value for businesses, as well as for valued partners, including MSPs, resellers and solutions partners with implementation and delivery skills. Our partners will be a significant channel for bringing generative AI to customers and helping them see value quickly.”
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, agreed.
“Generative AI has the potential to fundamentally improve how businesses operate in every industry,” he said.
Photo courtesy: ImageFlow/Shutterstock
If you do any cloud computing work whatsoever, this latest news roundup is just for you.
Let’s start with the multicloud world. Between earnings, rumors of post-acquisition divestitures by Broadcom and a new platform, there’s a lot happening this week at VMware. We cover those developments in the slideshow above.
And if you’re keen on applications integration within cloud computing, vendor Celigo has upgraded its partner program. Channel Futures has the industry’s first look at the news.
Up next, Google Cloud made a big move this week that impacts customers relying on more than one public cloud environment. And given how many of your cloud computing clients use more than one public provider’s brand, you’ll want the scoop on that.
From there, we take a quick look at the general availability of a new data-and-security-centric product from Amazon Web Services.
Finally, we wrap up with yet another new channel announcement regarding – what else? – generative AI. Because that seems to be where all of cloud computing is headed (OK, we exaggerate, but you get our point).
Click the image above to get started.
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