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The Register translates VMware's VMworld Europe 2018 news into plain English – our free guide for every reader
Have you tried innovating your enterprise synergy today?
Today marks the opening of VMware's VMworld Europe 2018 event in Barcelona, Spain. The Dell-owned virtualization giant has a bunch of announcements to kick off its shindig.
Now, your humble vulture has seen his fair share of marketing departments' techno-biz babble in his time during product launches, but has gotta say: VMware has turned corporate brandwidth messaging into an art form. To help readers cut through the blurb, we'll attempt to translate it into plain English.
Let's get cracking; the bolded text is word-for-word from VMworld Europe's announcements this morning.
VMware Extends Integrated Hybrid Cloud Platform to Deliver Greater Deployment Flexibility and Choice including New Kubernetes Support
Translation: You're getting updated Kubernetes support.
In today’s multi-cloud era, organizations are taking two approaches – hybrid cloud and native public cloud – to support their expanding set of applications as well as their adoption of new capabilities such as machine learning (ML), Kubernetes, and advanced analytics.
Translation: Sales keeps telling us to say "Kubernetes." Also, we just bought Kubernetes upstart Heptio. Anyone else doing Kubernetes? Anyone?
VMware is investing in solutions that address multi-cloud environments, advancing the hybrid cloud opportunities from the data center to the cloud to the edge and addressing the needs of native public cloud operations.
Translation: Version 3.5 of VMware Cloud Foundation – its software stack for setting up on-and-off-premises hybrid clouds – will be available by February 2019. It is validated to run with vSAN Ready Nodes on PowerEdge MX servers made by its parent, Dell EMC. Version 3.5 can work with VMware SDDC Manager, HPE Synergy Composer, and HPE OneView to together provide a user-interface to manage physical resources.
It integrates with VMware NSX-T 2.3, which tries to make managing the networking and security of Kubernetes containers easier and supports VMware's enterprise-aimed Pivotal Container Service (PKS) that also wrangles Kubernetes. (No, that's not a typo.) The NSX-T 2.3 integration also means sysadmins can search for objects and events, and perform operations, from a new user interface. Version 3.5 supports vSphere 6.7 Update 1, and includes VMware vRealize Automation 7.5.
The Cloud Foundation 3.5 bill of materials ... Click to enlarge
Also due to arrive by February as a packaged application or VMware Cloud service is VMware vRealize Network Insight 4.0. This tries to help sysadmins pinpoint application connectivity issues when using hybrid or multiple clouds, such as the network links between a virtual machine on-site and an EC2 instance hosted by Amazon Web Services. There are also new ways to view your network, and support has been added for Cisco networking equipment.
VMware Skyline Proactive Support for vRealize Operations, a customer support system, is also due to land early 2019.
VMware and AWS Accelerate Global Roll Out of VMware Cloud on AWS
Translation: VMware Cloud on AWS is coming to more Amazon regions this quarter: Ireland (AWS EU), northern California (AWS US West), and Ohio (AWS US East).
Jointly engineered by VMware and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), applications deployed in this environment benefit from robust disaster protection and optimized access to AWS services.
Translation: We can't stop you shifting your software to the Amazon cloud, but spare a thought for your old pal, VMware, eh?
VMware Cloud on AWS works pretty much like a compatibility layer that sits between your applications and AWS. Alternatively, think of it as VMware Cloud Foundation hosted by Amazon. Software designed to run within on-premises VMware environments should be able to run on AWS via this layer without having to rewrite or refactor the code, we're told.
You can also use Dell EMC's VxRail with VMware Site Recovery to fail over to VMware Cloud on AWS. There's also support for the Horizon Enterprise Suite, the virtual desktop management toolkit. You can also live migrate "thousands" of virtual machines between vSphere on-premises kit and VMware Cloud on AWS using HCX.
VMware Cloud Innovations Accelerate Growth and Transformation of Cloud Providers Across Europe
Translation: More cloud providers, such as OVH and Telefonica, are offering services that are compatible with VMware Cloud. Some 27 providers, more than a dozen in Europe, in total are verified as such, which is better than the five this time last year. VMware's also made "validated designs" – approved blueprints for services and infrastructure – for cloud providers to deploy.
As a result, partners can meet their critical business imperatives: drive operational efficiency with automation, quickly monetize new services, and compete more effectively.
Translation: It's hard to believe, but yes, our products bravely aim to deliver value to customers, staff, investors, friends, family, and all statutory and non-statutory bodies.
VMware Unveils Innovations across Intelligence-Driven Workspace ONE Platform to Embrace Technology Heterogeneity in the Workplace
Translation: We will wear you down.
Technology heterogeneity has never been more prolific in the workplace as employees continue to leverage a growing array of devices, OSes, services and apps to work in the manner that suits them best.
Translation: And we want our fingers in every single one of those pies, even though you know us as that server hypervisor giant.
We'll do this with updates like Workspace ONE Intelligence Automation Connector, which links business analytics toolbox Workspace ONE Intelligence to things like your IT service desks so you can see what needs fixing and why. Meanwhile, Workspace ONE Sensors for macOS allows sysadmins to query Macs on the corporate network for their details, from their hardware configurations to their installed software.
Dell Provisioning for Workspace ONE is now part of the Dell ProDeploy Client Suite. Admins can push desktop applications directly from their Flexera AdminStudio installations into their Workspace ONE workplace software catalog. An integration of Carbon Black, Workspace ONE Intelligence, and VMware AppDefense is being previewed; this combination is supposed to help detect and thwart miscreants and malware menacing your data centers.
That's about it for now. You can find all this stuff unfiltered here, and perhaps in more detail here: VMware and AWS, Cloud Foundation 3.5, and Workspace ONE. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
