VMware Expands Multi-Tenancy Cloud Capabilities
Initiative will help MSPs, cloud service providers attract midmarket enterprises
VMware is making it easier for MSPs to bring midmarket enterprises to VMware Cloud on AWS by introducing a multi-tenancy service that will reduce the service providers’ costs and let them better configure the cloud environment for their customers.
The Lowdown: Also at the VMworld 2019 Europe show this week, the company unveiled a tech preview of Project Path, which is designed to enable MSPs to uniformly deploy and manage VMware-based clouds that are running in both their own data centers and in public clouds.
The Details: Hybrid cloud environments for both MSPs and cloud service providers were a big push at the first day of VMware’s show. The key aspects of the effort included:
>VMware Cloud Director service: A Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) version of VMware’s vCloud Director platform, the new service enables MSPs to share a pool of VMware Cloud on AWS capacity among multiple tenants. The service at first will support VMware Cloud on AWS and then expand to other VMware-based clouds.
>Project Path: The initiative addresses the demand among cloud service providers and MSPs to be able to run VMware Software Defined Data Centers on public clouds without having to worry about the underlying hardware infrastructure. It will be built atop vCloud Director and VMware Cloud Provider Hub, rolled out in stages, and it will unify operations among all VMware cloud endpoints, including such top-tier public clouds as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud. Services offered will include multi-tenant Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), containers, migration, backup, and disaster recovery. The project also will bring together customer management, usage, billing, and support.
>Multicloud offerings: VMware is expanding its Cloud Provider Platform to include an updated vCloud Availability 3.5 for Disaster Recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS), expanded hub services with vRealize Automation Cloud to deliver application and development services, integration of vCloud Director and Bitnami Community Catalog to enable cloud providers and MSPs to more easily attract developer workloads, and VMware Cloud Provider Pod on Dell EMC infrastructure.
>IBM Cloud: Big Blue later this year will run out an exclusive beta of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared for multi-tenant environments on the IBM Cloud using vCloud Director.
The Impact: VMware is making the moves to help cloud and channel partners address growing demand among enterprises of all sizes that are adopting multicloud and hybrid cloud strategies. Analysts with 451 Research said that 57% of organizations are migrating to hybrid environments. In addition, IDC said that 62% of companies that use public cloud IaaS use multiple providers.
The Buzz: “VMware’s strategy is to offer partners consistent cloud infrastructure and operations that support their customers’ multi-cloud strategies and enable them to simultaneously employ both asset-heavy and asset-light business models,” said Rajeev Bhardwaj, vice president of products for VMware’s Cloud Provider Software Business Unit. “For the first time, VMware Cloud on AWS will support multi-tenancy through the new VMware Cloud Director service, enabling MSPs to more quickly and easily create full software-defined data centers in the AWS cloud for small and [midsize] enterprises. With Project Path, partners will be able to accelerate their delivery of both VMware-based and native public cloud services, to more efficiently support customer operations across clouds, and better meet customer needs by deploying applications to whichever cloud best suits their business or IT requirements.”
“Businesses across industries are adopting hybrid cloud strategies as they migrate critical workloads to the cloud and drive the innovation their customers demand,” said Harish Grama, general manager of IBM Public Cloud. “Our partnership with VMware has long been a crucial part of how we equip clients on their journey to cloud, and IBM continues to offer a highly differentiated, open, and more secure public cloud environment where clients can migrate VMware workloads. By introducing new solutions like IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared, we’re giving clients the choice and flexibility needed to more easily take advantage of the cloud opportunity.”
“VMware has been a long-time strategic partner in helping establish OVHcloud as the industry’s alternative cloud to businesses both large and small, and across a broad set of industries,” said Alain Fiocco, executive vice president and CTO at OVHcloud. “With a cloud that is built on VMware’s more secure, consistent infrastructure and operations, we’ve successfully expanded our global footprint, attracting large enterprise customers such as Alcatel Lucent Enterprise, Entelgy Innotec Security, Villeroy & Boch, Arcade Beauty, Divante, and Paymento.”
“Telefónica’s VDC (Virtual Data Center) service offers enterprises cloud infrastructure and value-added services such as backup, disaster recovery, security, and packaged enterprise applications,” said José María Cuéllar, global cloud director at Telefónica. “Telefónica is actively working with VMware to extend its VDC 4.0 Applications pillar, based on the VMware Cloud Provider Platform, by offering Bitnami’s Community Catalog to its enterprise Developers and DevOps customers in the upcoming VDC releases. With Bitnami Community Catalog now available on vCloud Director, Telefónica is looking forward to offering packaged applications as both VMs and containers along with its Kubernetes as a Service. We are proud to be partnering with VMware to help enterprises easily develop and deploy cloud-native applications in our VDCs.”
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