At VMworld Europe 2019, IBM announced an extended partnership with VMware to accelerate hybrid cloud innovation and adoption across global enterprises. Through new and updated technology offerings, IBM aims to make it easier for enterprises to more securely move VMware workloads to the cloud and leverage open technologies to modernize their business operations.
According to IBM and VMware, companies are at a critical juncture in their cloud journey as they begin to modernize their most mission-critical workloads in search of greater speed and flexibility. With data often spread across disparate computing environments, clients are embracing a hybrid strategy in which they're enabling applications to share data across clouds and on premises environments.
As businesses look to optimize everything from supply chains to core banking systems, IBM and VMware say they can help speed enterprise hybrid cloud adoption through a suite of new solutions that accelerate the migration of critical VMware workloads to IBM's public cloud in a highly secured, open environment, made possible through the following announcements:
- IBM plans to release a beta in December 2019of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared, offering enterprises of all sizes more options for hybrid cloud adoption. A new multi-tenant solution on IBM's public cloud using VMware vCloud Director, it will be offered as an alternative to IBM's single-tenant solution that provides a client-managed environment with full control for the user. IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared can give enterprises of all sizes a flexible, managed environment where they can directly provision their virtual machines on-demand to address the needs of diverse set of projects and businesses. This will free clients from manually installing and managing updates to their virtual infrastructure or managing multiple third-party vendors, instead allowing them to focus on driving innovation. The new solution will be made available through IBM partners or directly to end users so that enterprises of all sizes can utilize IBM's public cloud with greater flexibility.
- IBM is enabling the automated deployment of Red Hat OpenShift directly on top of a client's VMware Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) environments in IBM's public cloud as a self-managed solution. This is designed to provide customers with an on-ramp for migrating their mission-critical workloads to the cloud by leveraging their existing VMware footprint. Beginning in December, customers will be able to deploy Kubernetes within this environment more easily in order to modernize existing VMware applications or build new applications on containers alongside their virtual machines, all while maintaining the same level of network control and security policies.
- IBM and HCL Technologies are also collaborating to help clients migrate and modernize VMware workloads on IBM's public cloud. By onboarding its customers to IBM's public cloud, HCL will be able to help them quickly modernize their business-critical workloads. At the same time, clients can maintain their cloud with the highest certified levels of security, as well as high availability, to help them with their compliance with data governance obligations. HCL will also work with IBM to transform and modernize VMware applications with Kubernetes and containers leveraging Red Hat OpenShift on IBM's public cloud.
- IBM Cloud for VMware Mission Critical Workloads and IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services with HyTrust Data Control Integration are now generally available, enabling clients to manage and replicate data across regions to aid them in their data compliance responsibilities. IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services and HyTrust Data Control Integration offers the industry's highest level of protection for data encryption keys.
"Today's news highlights the continued momentum we're driving through our longstanding partnership with VMware and our shared vision to help clients adopt hybrid cloud strategies that can truly modernize their operations," said Harish Grama, general manager, IBM Public Cloud. "Enterprises are selecting IBM's public cloud as the best destination to migrate their VM workloads and drive the innovation that will transform their businesses."
"Cloud is no longer a destination but rather an operating model about which VMware and IBM have a deep understanding," said Ajay Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Provider Software business unit, VMware. "We have helped thousands of large global enterprise customers migrate tens of thousands of mission-critical workloads to the cloud and operate them at scale. Once in the IBM Cloud, these customers can transform applications in ways not possible by simply running them on-prem, taking advantage of a rich set of cloud-native services for application development, AI/ML, machine learning and IoT."
For more on IBM and VMware, go to www.ibm.com/cloud/vmworld.