It’s been an exciting first day keynote today at VMworld 2016 with several very important announcements. It was great to hear from Pat Gelsinger on how VMware plans to extend our hybrid cloud strategy with the new Cross-Cloud Architecture while continuing to deliver innovative solutions that our customers can use today. In this respect, I am particularly enthusiastic about VMware’s announcement of VMware Cloud Foundation™ and IBM’s announcement of the VMware Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud service. I’d like to spend a few more words about them here.
As Frank Wegner pointed out in his excellent article on this blog last week (“Making It Easy To Build The Cloud”), IT departments are looking for solutions to simplify infrastructure by removing barriers that today hinder their ability to rapidly respond to the needs of the business. From many conversations with customers, it is clear that in many cases building the cloud has become the bottleneck and that customers need an integrated approach to solve it. This is what we plan to accomplish with VMware Cloud Foundation.
In simple terms, Cloud Foundation integrates vSphere, VSAN and NSX into a single unified stack that can be provisioned on premise or be run as a service in the cloud. You can read all the details about it on the product page. I’d like to point out some key characteristics here.
The secret ingredient that brings the platform together is VMware SDDC Manager, a core component of Cloud Foundation that allows the cloud admin to manage the cloud infrastructure software as a single unified stack. SDDC Manager provides end-to-end lifecycle automation of the cloud infrastructure software, reducing the time it takes to build and operate the environment by over 80% compared to traditional approaches. Our early field trials proved customers could stand up a complete private cloud in a matter of hours.
From an architecture standpoint, Cloud Foundation delivers the next-generation hyper-converged software platform by combining compute, storage, and network virtualization into a natively integrated stack from a single vendor. This goes far beyond what any other hyper-converged vendor offers, with major advantages for our customers. Not only do you benefit from the most mature and robust virtualization stack in the industry, but you also get significant cost savings (30-40% vs. other hyper-converged solutions in all flash deployments) with the added benefits of NSX.
Another unique aspect of VMware Cloud Foundation is deployed on premises and, for the first time, also run as a service in the cloud. For private clouds, customers can combine Cloud Foundation with a range of qualified VSAN Ready Nodes from Dell, QCT and HP and switches from Cisco and Arista, or procure the turnkey integrated systems VCE VxRack 1000 SDDC. As always we strive to provide a broad choice of options. For public cloud, IBM is the first VMware vCloud Air Network partner delivering a service based on VMware Cloud Foundation with its newly launched VMware Cloud Foundation on IBM Cloud service. We are extremely excited about the work we have done together with IBM which will allow our customers to build a truly hybrid cloud with stretched networking, workload mobility between clouds, and a common management. 
So What Does All This Mean?
We all know how server virtualization made it easy to provision compute resources to applications. VMware has started this revolution in the data center. With Cloud Foundation we are now taking it to the next level and making it just as simple to provision a full SDDC on premise or in the cloud. This completes a major step forward towards our cloud strategy, and allows our customers to take full advantage of VMware’s SDDC stack to build a true hybrid cloud!
If you are at VMworld and want to learn more about Cloud Foundation, stop by the VMware booth, try the Hands-On-Lab (HOL 1706-SDC-5) or join us in these sessions:
SDDC9035-S SDDC and Hyper-converged has Arrived – Get on Board!
SDDC8618-S Introducing VMware Cloud Foundation
SDDC9108 VMware Cloud Foundation – Future Innovations
SDDC8621 VMware Cloud Foundation: Technical Deep Dive
SDDC8748 Building a Successful Business Case for VMware Cloud Foundation
SDDC8351 How VMware Cloud Foundation Makes Your Private Cloud Operation More Efficient
Alternatively, sign up for our webinar on Sep 13th 2016 and join the VMware Cloud Foundation VMTN Community.
