Edge and multi-cloud blitz: Top five launches from VMworld

California-based cloud computing giant VMW recently announced some key launches during its annual VMworld 2021 virtual event. 

The event provides enterprises a sneak peek into the cloud and virtualisation trends, especially in the multi-cloud and edge computing areas.   

“Multi-cloud is going to be the model we use for the next 20 years. That’s because multi-cloud is about increasing applications velocity and innovation,” said Rangarajan Raghuram, CEO of VMware.  

As per TechCircle, here are the top five announcements from VMware world:   

Cross-cloud services  

In our recent interview with MD of VMware India, Pradeep Nair, we had discussed the importance of interoperability between different cloud vendors in the multi-cloud environment.  

VMware had launched the cross-cloud services, a set of integrated services that can provide developers with the option to build, run and secure applications on any cloud.   

“Customers can solve the problem of embracing multi-cloud for cloud native apps, enterprise apps and edge apps through a connected set of services,” said Sumit Dhawan, president of VMware.   

Within the cross-cloud services, VMware will focus on deployment of cloud native apps, infrastructure for running enterprise applications, managing different cloud vendors, security, and digital solutions for the hybrid work model (which also includes edge solutions). 

VMware Edge compute stack  

With edge computing fast gaining ground among enterprises, led by the rise of 5G and work from anywhere environments, VMware released its own portfolio of edge solutions in a stack to support edge-native apps across multi-cloud environments.   

The stack is expected to be provided in three tiers -- enterprise, advanced and standard.  

The company also plans to introduce a lightweight version, aimed at apps that do not require too much RAM to run.   

“AR-VR, connected vehicles, and immersive gaming are becoming the mainstream. 5G has made the use of collaborative robots, drone fleets and digital twins a reality,” said Sanjay Uppal, SVP of Edge at VMware.   

Democratizing Tanzu   

Tanzu, a suite of solutions for managing Kubernetes clusters in different clouds, has a free version in the form of the Tanzu Community Edition.  However, the VMware asserted that it will increase the fray of developers who can work on Kubernetes or  microservices environments.   

The open-source edition can be configured on local workstations, on VMware vSphere (virtualisation platform), or public clouds.  

It is aimed at DevOps engineers, IT operators and application developers.   

Nvidia partnerships  

VMware also announced a few partnerships with chip maker NVidia.  NVidia’s graphic processing unit will now support the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid.  

It will work in AWS, Azure and vSphere environments, through the launch of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid version 1.4.   

The grid service will be integrated with the Nvidia AI Enterprise to help customers automate workloads that are containerised (applications run in isolated user spaces called containers).   

This will allow clients to run AI project trials on Nvidia AI enterprise with vSphere and Tanzu. For IT teams which are already utilising vSphere, this, VMware said, will help to deliver faster kubernetes clusters to AI developers.   

Security solutions  

A recent report by security firm Sophos showed that financial services firms spent over $2 million on average on ransomware recovery in 2020. Ransomware has been one of the prominent challenges facing CIOs since the pandemic increased work from home scenarios.   

VMware launched the Cloud Disaster Recovery as a service solution (DRaaS) for faster recovery from attacks and also to avoid instances of paying ransomware.  

The company said it has improved security evaluation, automated testing and better recovery of applications with the new solution.    

Other announcements include progress in the company’s “journey to Zero Trust,” initiative.  

Zero trust is a simple concept that sees every entity, inside of outside, with a discerning eye. New capabilities have also been added to the secure access service edge (SASE) an emerging cybersecurity concept, in which software-defined networking and network security functions and delivers them from a single service provider.