VMworld: FireMon, NetApp, Fortanix, Others Unveil Latest Products, Services

VMWARE VMWORLD — Numerous companies in the channel are rolling out their latest solutions at this week’s massive VMworld 2019 conference in San Francisco.

Partners are on hand to learn more about VMware’s recently announced Pivotal Software and Carbon Black acquisitions, and big changes to the vendor’s Partner Connect program.

FireMon, which provides network security management for hybrid cloud, unveiled Global Policy Controller (GPC) for VMware NSX, which delivers persistent network policy enforcement across virtual, multicloud and multi-platform environments.

GPC automates security across diverse network and security products regardless of vendor, where the backbone is the VMware NSX architecture. GPC complements and extends the security capabilities of VMware NSX.

FireMon’s Tim Woods

Tim Woods, FireMon’s vice president of technology alliances, tells us customers choose VMware NSX to “power the speed and agility of their network virtualization efforts across a hybrid landscape.”

“The heterogeneity of this landscape demands intelligent automation if it is to operate at scale,” he said. “No single component in the process can limit the other when customers need to build, deploy, secure and run applications at business speed. An example of this is VMware’s acquisition of Pivotal to ensure deployment consistency and Carbon Black to ensure endpoint security. The lines started blurring for some time now when talk[ing] about private cloud, public cloud and on-premises. FireMon’s GPC delivers consistent intelligent policy automation to ensure security is intrinsic to any deploy and run process. This gives VMware and FireMon partners a unique path to providing their customers continuous adaptable security that can be centralized for both NSX and multi-vendor hybrid environments.”

Also, storage provider NetApp debuted a new virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution, NetApp HCI for VDI with VMware Horizon 7. It also announced the availability of NetApp Kubernetes Service (NKS) and NetApp HCI Implementation Services for VMware Private Cloud, all designed to accelerate VMware workloads and make it easy for customers to run their applications where they want.

Chris Lamborn, NetApp’s head of worldwide partner go to market and programs, tells us his company is the only VMware partner that offers “simplified, scaleable” infrastructure for any cloud.

NetApp’s Chris Lamborn

“It’s a further example of how data fabric enables partners to optimize customer environments, increase efficiency for managed services solutions, and simplify the management of data in complex hybrid cloud environments in a single experience,” he said.

Cybersecurity vendor Fortanix said its Self-Defending Key Management Service (SDKMS) now supports secure enterprise-wide encryption for VMware vSAN and vSphere environments, protecting VMware customers’ private data in both cloud and on-premise VMware infrastructure.

“SDKMS is the only unified hardware security module (HSM) and key management solution leveraging the power of Intel SGX and secure enclaves that is now available for VMware customers,” said Ambuj Kumar, Fortanix’s CEO and co-founder. “Working with VMware enables us to deliver the unique encryption services and deterministic security from Fortanix to the wide vSAN and vSphere customer bases.”

Also at VMworld, data storage company Cloudian announced general availability of its object storage solution for VMware cloud providers. The solution is managed directly from VMware vCloud Director, a key component of the VMware Cloud Provider Platform. As a result, VMware cloud providers can now offer their customers new and enhanced value-add storage services, including storage as a service, backup as a service, archive as a service, DRaaS and big data as a service.

Dell Technologies introduced …

… the new Dell EMC SD-WAN solution and Dell EMC SmartFabric Director, both powered by VMware.

“Dell EMC and VMware are rebuilding the network for the cloud era — with everything open, automated and software-defined,” said Tom Burns, senior vice president and general manager of Dell EMC networking and solutions. “New SD-WAN solutions powered by VMware and network fabric management delivered by SmartFabric Director raise the stakes when it comes to network virtualization and security in today’s highly distributed software-defined enterprise. We’re just getting started on our combined innovation.”

Also at VMworld: