VMware Launches New Multi-Cloud SaaS Solutions For Partners

VMware is doubling down on enabling partners to provide multi-cloud services by launching a slew of new solutions that the channel can white-label to help customers better manage cloud costs, operations, security and compliance across clouds.

To address the challenges of multi-cloud environments head-on, VMware is providing the channel with three new cloud automation services -- dubbed VMware Cloud Assembly, VMware Service Broker and VMware Code Steam – which streamline application delivery and enable cloud flexibly.

Robert Keblusek, CTO of Sentinel Technologies, a Downers Grove, Ill.-based VMware partner, said the Software-as-a-Service-based automation services will be a great sell to DevOps teams and help all customers better embrace a hybrid cloud strategy.

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"DevOps teams or customers moving to DevOps stands out as a use case where we can win with [these new services]," said Keblusek. "However, I think it could help all IT teams that embrace hybrid cloud because these tools enable a hybrid cloud strategy. ... Using resources like this multi-cloud technology, automation and orchestration will help businesses realize the true value of cloud services."

VMware Cloud Assembly delivers unified provisioning across all clouds through Infrastructure as Code, including VMware Cloud on AWS, native AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and IBM Cloud, to name a few. With the SaaS-based solution, IT and cloud operations teams can orchestrate and expedite infrastructure and application delivery in line with DevOps principles that improves the overall developer experience.

VMware Service Broker provides self-service access to multi-cloud infrastructure and application resources from a single catalog, without requiring disparate tools. VMware Code Stream automates the code and application release process with a set of capabilities for application deployment, testing and troubleshooting. Code Stream features integrations with popular developer tools and supports VMware private clouds, VMware Cloud on AWS, AWS and Azure public clouds.

Chris Wolf, CTO, Global Field and Industry for VMware, said the entire automation services stack is API-driven.

"Partners now have lots of flexibility in terms of how they want to integrate and implement different components of the stack," said Wolf of the new offerings. "The Cloud Assembly piece is really setting up different profiles, projects, and you can set up a variety of templates. You can publish all of those to the Service Broker which can be white-labeled and allows you to take all this content from different clouds to now have specific service offerings and target specific industry verticals. Partners have a lot of flexibly in terms of what these services can look like."

Keblusek said the new services will give Sentinel the ability to create better efficiencies and agility for customers. "With the automation in place, there are tight controls, consistency of deployment, and we can enable DevOps teams and others to provision and locate workloads on their own without lengthy delays waiting on IT to provision services and possibly even need to provision infrastructure to support new services."

On the security front, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor launched VMware Secure State to help reduce risk across multi-cloud environments. The new cloud configuration security and compliance service addresses violations in cloud configurations in real time by automating configuration security and compliance monitoring in native cloud environments.

IT research firm Forrester reports that 89 percent of enterprises use at least two clouds with 74 percent using at least three or more public clouds.

Wolf said all the new services fall under VMware's Cloud Services unified platform which helps engineering and DevOps teams get visibility into their cloud resources, manage costs and drive efficiency.

"VMware is not trying to dictate one type of operational model for our customers," said Wolf. "If you want to send everything through the delivery pipeline with Code Stream, go right ahead. If you want to have more flexibility and have some consolidation in terms of the operational side, you can do that too. Every business is going to be slightly different. It's really our partners that know the nuance of those differences. So we want to make sure we're giving partners the flexibility they need."