Hybrid Cloud Strategy New With VMware CrossCloud Architecture

VMware has announced a new aspect of its hybrid cloud strategy with the new VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture which provides the ability to run, manage, connect, and secure applications across clouds and devices in a common operating environment.

In support of the company's cloud strategy, VMware also announced the following:

- VMware Cloud Foundation is a unified Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) platform to help companies manage and run their SDDC clouds.

- Technology Preview of Cross-Cloud Services to provide insight into how to manage, govern, and secure applications running in private and public clouds, including AWS, Azure and IBM Cloud.

- VMware vCloud Availability, a new family of disaster recovery offerings built for vCloud Air Network partners.

- A new release of VMware vCloud Air Hybrid Cloud Manager to provide VMware vSphere users zero downtime application migration to VMware vCloud Air.

As a hybrid cloud architecture, VMware’s Cross-Cloud Architecture offers deployment models, security policies, visibility, and governance for all applications, running on-premises and off-premises, regardless of the underlying cloud, hardware platform or hypervisor. VMware's Cross-Cloud Architecture builds on the company’s private and hybrid cloud capabilities by offering the opportunity to work in multiple clouds, and is delivered through VMware Cloud Foundation and the VMware vRealize cloud management platform.

VMware Cloud Foundation offers an hyper-converged infrastructure for building private clouds that combines VMware's scalable hyper-converged software (VMware vSphere and VMware Virtual SAN) with the company’s network virtualization platform - VMware NSX. 

VMware SDDC Manager is a core component of VMware Cloud Foundation and provides the opportunity to automate the deployment and management of VMware cloud software. SDDC Manager helps to build and maintain the entire VMware cloud software stack, freeing cloud administrators from the task of installing, configuring, managing and updating their cloud infrastructure, making it possible to build a complete cloud in a matter of hours. 

The VMware Cloud Foundation offers a new "as-a-service" option that delivers the SDDC in a hybrid cloud environment. IBM is the first VMware vCloud Air Network partner delivering new offerings based on VMware Cloud Foundation with its VMware Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud offering. VMware Cloud Foundation will be available on additional public clouds, including vCloud Air, in the future. 

For private clouds, users can procure turnkey VxRack Systems integrated solutions from EMC, or combine Cloud Foundation software with qualified VMware Virtual SAN Ready Nodes from Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and QCT.

VMware Cloud Foundation runs any traditional or cloud-native application, from business-critical scale-up applications to distributed scale-out applications. Regardless of whether they are in virtual machines or containers, VMware Cloud Foundation provides a platform to provide performance, resiliency, security and manageability offered through vSphere, Virtual SAN and VMware NSX. 

VMware Cloud Foundation integrates with existing VMware solutions including:

- VMware vRealize Suite delivers a cloud management platform (CMP) that can speed up IT service delivery, improves IT operations, and delivers end-user choice with control, across heterogeneous, multi-cloud environments (vSphere and non-vSphere).

- VMware vSphere Integrated Containers will enable developers to innovate faster with secure, multi-tenant self-service access to containers, while IT will be able to leverage existing tools, knowledge, and processes to deploy and manage container services.

- VMware Integrated OpenStack gives customers the fastest path to deploy and manage a production-grade OpenStack cloud on top of a VMware-based SDDC infrastructure.

VMware Horizon enables customers to quickly deliver virtualized desktops and applications through a single platform, creating a secure digital workspace.

Cross-Cloud Services are new Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings currently under development to provide visibility into cloud usage and costs, enhance consistent networking and security policies, and automate the deployment, management, and migration of applications and data across vSphere and non-vSphere private and public clouds. 

It provides a common operating environment for both public clouds and on-premises workloads that provide the ability to protect data and applications and control costs while enabling developers and the business to innovate freely in the clouds they choose. The Cross-Cloud Services VMware include:

- Discovery and Analytics: enabling discovery, onboarding, and governance of public cloud applications.

- Compliance and Security: using micro-segmentation and monitoring to provide security and compliance for applications across clouds.

- Deployment and Migration: providing developers the ability to work cross-cloud, and IT the ability to manage cross-cloud applications with security and compliance.

VMware has announced VMware vCloud Availability for vCloud Director, which will provide cloud-based disaster recovery services that support customers' vSphere environments by leveraging native vSphere replication capabilities. This solution will be designed expressly for VMware vCloud Air Network service providers.

To extend a VMware private cloud to VMware vCloud Air, the latest version of Hybrid Cloud Manager offers new enhancements for application migration and to help improve the performance of the connection between the two environments. vCloud Air Hybrid Cloud Manager enables users to extend on-premises networks to vCloud Air over a software-defined WAN. 

vCloud Air Hybrid Cloud Manager also enables zero downtime, bi-directional migration of entire applications, as well as the migration of NSX security policies to vCloud Air Advanced Networking Services. Customers can move virtual machines up to 20x faster with an optimized network while retaining the same security policies and controls available on-premises, all with the least disruption to the business.