VMware Cloud Foundation Simplifies SDDC for Multiple Clouds

VMware made an aggressive move in the SDN arena this week, announcing a comprehensive software-defined data center (SDDC) solution. The VMware Cloud Foundation offering bundles compute, storage and networking virtualization into a single solution for building out multi-cloud infrastructures. In tandem with the news, the company named IBM as its first official cloud partner, enabling its customers to quickly set up cloud infrastructure in the IBM public cloud.

Always a proponent of interoperability, VMware is demonstrating a cross-cloud strategy for working with AWS and Microsoft Azure as well. The new solution provides a natively-integrated infrastructure stack that includes the vSphere server virtualization technology, the VSAN software-defined storage technology and the NSX software-defined networking technology. The result is a full service SDDC platform for hybrid and multi-cloud environments that includes an SDDC Manager for fully automating the deployment and managing the lifecycle of SDDC data centers.

The Cloud Foundation is part of VMware’s larger Cross-Cloud Architecture announcement, which is designed to let customers run, manage, connect and secure applications across clouds and devices – all in a common operating environment.

"Customers are increasingly relying on multiple public and private clouds to run their applications, but are daunted by the challenge of managing and securing applications across diverse cloud platforms," said Raghu Raghuram, executive vice president and general manager, Software-Defined Data Center Division, VMware. "When customers combine a best-in-class private cloud with leading public clouds, all enabled by VMware, they have the strongest, most flexible hybrid cloud strategy. VMware is delivering cloud freedom and control by providing a common operating environment for all clouds with our unique Cross-Cloud Architecture."

Cloud Foundation may be run on-premise or as a service and is available in several formats. Customers interested in building private clouds will access the VCE VxRack 1000 SDDC hyper-converged infrastructure system, while those building public clouds will initially be able to access IBM Cloud. VMware said the offering will also be available for the vCloud Air Network and vCloud Air later in the year.

Edited by Maurice Nagle