VMware Inc, the US-based provider of enterprise software infrastructure, announced a deep integration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) with the acquisition of CloudHealth Technologies and explained its hybrid cloud strategy during VMworld 2018 in Las Vegas at the end of August.
The company said it was jumping into Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) and is offering blockchain capabilities in moves that will enable enterprises to build self-driving-vehicle data centres and manage multi-cloud infrastructure in order to increase their agility and develop and deliver new applications more rapidly, driving towards digital transformation.
"The cloud, mobile apps, AI and the IoT are technology superpowers that are unlocking game-changing opportunities on a global scale," Pat Gelsinger, chief executive of VMware, said in his keynote address. VMware World 2018 marked the company's 20th anniversary celebration and was attended by over 35,000 guests.
The vision is to empower any device to run with any application through any cloud, he said. Businesses are on a journey of multiple clouds and of different types: hybrid, public, local clouds, Software as a Service, edge and telecom clouds.
"We're on the cusp of constructing a network of clouds, a marriage of the best of private and public clouds combined with powerful edge computing and telecom 5G clouds," Mr Gelsinger said. "The future of clouds will be driven, as always, by applications, and as apps grow more complex we can say the application is the network."
In order to maximise performance, an application can divide itself into smaller segments, distributed across multiple computers and often across multiple data centres, networks and clouds. Increasingly, these hybrid apps run at the edge, VMware extends computing capabilities to edge devices so that analytics can be performed right at the source of the data, without any network latency.
For instance, some airlines are installing a mini "data centre in a box" in airport hangars so they can run real-time analytics on their jet engines as soon as a plane lands.
Mr Gelsinger said the upcoming 5G network would also play a central role in the future of cloud.
"The hybrid cloud of the future is an agile combination of private, public, telecom, at the edge of these components, interacting and collaborating with each other on top of a common digital architectural foundation," he said.
Untapped telecoms
Mr Gelsinger said each enterprise network is mostly virtualised -- at least 80% -- while telecom networks are still virtualised to under 20%, adding that the coming of 5G will force telecom operators to move into a more virtualised network infrastructure as they will need to manage different devices in the network more flexibly.
Shekar Ayyar, VMware's executive vice-president for strategy and corporate development, said telecom operators globally will spend at least US$1 trillion (32.8 trillion baht) on technology, 20% of which will be for communication networks, making a new market by transforming their existing legacy into a virtualised network.
Hybrid cloud service
"In August last year, AWS became a leading public cloud provider in partnership with VMware with VMware Cloud on AWS, enabling customers to use hybrid cloud and both companies have doubled the numbers of customers every quarter since," said Andy Jassy, chief executive of AWS, who was speaking with VMware on the stage at VMworld 2018.
At the event, AWS and VMware introduced a new service called Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) on VMware, enabling customers to use Amazon's cloud-based database management software to automate database management in VMware-based software-defined private data centres.
In addition, Mr Gelsinger said the availability of VMware Cloud on AWS will also be expanded to the Asia-Pacific region by the fourth quarter.
The service will enable faster migration of applications and cloud-based disaster recovery usage, including faster data centre evacuation.
Multi-cloud management
Mr Gelsinger said partnering with AWS will strengthen VMware's hybrid cloud offering as part of the Multi-cloud Strategy, by allowing customers to have a digital foundation by managing and automating different cloud environments to reduce operating costs and enable faster development of new applications.
Forrester reports that 89% of enterprises use at least two clouds and 74% are using at least three or more public clouds.
VMware also announced the purchase of the CloudHealth startup, a cloud management platform, which will help businesses to track, analyse and control the costs of using different clouds.
And ResearchAndMarkets.com predicts that the multi-cloud management market size will grow from $1.1 billion in 2017 to $4.4 billion by 2022, a compound annual growth rate of 30.9%.
Self-driving data centres
Moreover, Mr Gelsinger said that by embracing AI technology under Project Magna, a major new platform designed for AI computing requirements and self-driving car networks, in the future its technology will make a self-driving data centre based on machine learning possible.
Project Magna can learn and understand application behaviour to the point that it can model, test and then reconfigure the network to a make it more optimal to improve performance.
It also uses machine learning and AI, with integrated advanced security capabilities deeper in virtual machines for secure applications by detecting suspicious app behaviour that reduces the number of security tools and automates patching.
The company also offers an open-source project called Project Concord, a decentralised trust infrastructure for digital consensus that may be used to help enterprises harness blockchain technology in a dramatically efficient manner to advance their business goals.