Capgemini, VMware team on cloud orchestration
The buzz is building around cloud orchestration platforms that help companies manage cloud applications and services more holistically within their entire IT infrastructure. Another example of activity around this concept came in mid-January, with the news that global consulting and outsourcing company Capgemini is teaming up even more closely with cloud infrastructure and virtualization company VMware than it has in the past.
In fact, the two apparently are collaborating on solutions that combine Capgemini's existing cloud orchestration platform with VMware's primary technologies around this: VMware vCloud Automation Center, vCenter Operations Management Suite, and VMware IT Business Management Suite.
One high-level goal of this partnership is improve provisioning, data protection services and other processes that span multiple services and applications, and that conform with policies set by the organization. This points to the development of service portals (or, if you prefer, an internal brokerage) where teams from across a business can access or select IT services that have been vetted or integrated to meet the company's specifications. This same platform will provide both financial and IT managers with statistics useful for understanding consumption metrics, as well as for organizing billing.
"In order to support a globally connected workforce, cloud solutions that are efficient, effective and bring real-time business insights are essential," said Raf Howery, senior vice president and head of Infra Strategy and Ecosystem, Capgemini, in a statement. "Expanding our VMware partnership with the introduction of our new business cloud solution is a key part of our cloud orchestration strategy, allowing enterprises to better manage the complexity of their IT transformation journey. It will enable them to transition to cloud with greater flexibility and simplicity and to obtain resources across legacy, public, private or hybrid environments. They will see an immediate business impact."
For those who want to hear more about the expanded relationship, some additional details are provided in the marketing video interview between VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and Patrick Nicolet, head of infrastructure services for Capgemini: