VMware pushes enterprise hybrid clouds in first VMworld announcements

VMware and a number of its partners made a number of announcements on the first day of VMware's VMworld. These companies are hoping that these products and services will persuade large and medium size enterprises to put their toe in the water and try out cloud computing by first implementing their own on-premise cloud environment and then linking that with external cloud computing services.

Here's what VMware had to say about their new initiatives.

• Global Connect – Multiple service providers, multiple geographies; a single global cloud First introduced in August 2010, VMware vCloud Datacenter Services are enterprise-class public clouds built on VMware cloud infrastructure, including VMware vSphere®, VMware vShield™ and VMware vCloud Director™. Certified by VMware and offering globally consistent management and security, this network of service providers is expected to span 25 datacenters in 13 countries by the end of 2011. Today VMware and its partners are introducing Global Connect, an optional feature of the vCloud Datacenter service that will allow customers to use cloud services from multiple providers across geographies as if they are a single, virtualcloud. Bluelock, SingTel and Softbank are expected to be the first providers to offer Global Connect services.
• For multinational customers that require high performance (low-latency), highly available cloud computing local to the countries where they operate, Global Connect will give them an easier way to address compliance with international regulations for data privacy, locality and confidentiality. Customers will work directly with their local vCloud Datacenter service provider, who orchestrates service delivery internationally with Global Connect, allowing customers to seamlessly leverage services from connected providers with a single contract and “single pane of glass” management across clouds using vCloud Connector.
• VMware vCloud Connector™ 1.5 – Fast, reliable transfer between private and public clouds Since its introduction in February 2011, more than 1,300VMware customers have adopted VMware vCloud Connector to view, transfer and manage workloads between vSphere clusters, private and public clouds. Today, VMware is announcing vCloud Connector 1.5 with a new faster, highly reliable data transfer architecturethat will reduce the time it takes to transfer workloads, while automatically retrying and resuming transfers interrupted by network problems. vCloud Connector 1.5 will also be accessible from any compatible Web browser, or as a plug-in for vCenter Console.
• vcloud.vmware.com – The gateway to the enterprise hybrid cloud To help customers more easily begin extending their virtualized datacenters to the hybrid cloud, VMware today launched an online destination where enterprises can find vCloud service providers, learn about their capabilities and coverage, and quickly test drive new cloud services. Customers can then easily and quickly transfer workloads and data into those cloud services using the integrated vCloud Connector 1.5 Web client.
• Disaster recovery to the cloud with vCenter Site Recovery Manager™ 5 Today, four VMware service provider partners are announcing plans to introduce new cloud-based disaster recovery services built on vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5, which was announced on July 12, 2011. FusionStorm, Hosting.com, iland and VeriStor are expected to be the first providers to offer these services, which will make it simple and cost-effective for businesses of all sizes to protect their applications by allowing them to failover to a service provider’s site in the event of a disaster. These cloud-based services will be sold on a pay-per-use model, eliminating the significant cost associated with building dedicated failover sites.
• When a disaster happens, or a customer wants to perform recovery testing, vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 will automate and manage the entire failover process, and can also automatically “failback” to the customer’s site once the customer is ready to resume operations. This is made possible by the new VMware vSphere Replication capabilities in vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5. VMware vSphere Replication is the industry’s first hypervisor-based replication, which enables data replication across sites independently of the underlying storage arrays. This eliminates the need for identical storage environments across primary and recovery sites and simplifies data replication between customer datacenters and public clouds.
• VMware Cloud Infrastructure Suite – The Foundation for the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Announced on July 12, 2011, VMware vSphere 5 and the cloud infrastructure suite, including VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5, VMware vCloud Director 1.5 and VMware vShield 5, are the foundation for the enterprise hybrid cloud. Together, these products will help customers transform IT to drive greater efficiency of existing investments and improve operational agility.

Snapshot analysis

When I speak with IT strategists in medium and large size organizations, they indicate that they're interested in learning more about cloud computing, but also point out concerns they have with performance, security, and reliability. Those whose operations are in countries having strict privacy or data location regulations also are concerned about where data is stored and how it is protected.

VMware and its partners appear to have heard similar things because they've come up with a set of programs, products and initiatives that, at first glance, address those concerns.

As with other VMware programs, however, it appears that company believes that it is the only supplier of processing virtualization technologies. While it is possible that access, application, processing, networking and storage virtualization products will work with VMware's new products, nothing about this was included in the release.

I hope to learn more about this in sessions at VMworld.