At a VMworld 2019 Europe conference, VMware this week unfurled a multi-tenant instance of the VMware Cloud Director service that will make it simpler for cloud service providers to more cost-effectively make cloud services available across multiple customers.
Initially available on VMware Cloud on AWS, this iteration of VMware Cloud Director will eventually make its way on to other public clouds, says Rajeev Bhardwaj, vice president of products for the Cloud Provider Software Business Unit at VMware. IBM, for example, announced plans to release a private beta later this year of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared based on the multi-tenant instance of VMware vCloud Director.
VMware has also launched announced Project Path, which will enable managed service providers (MSPs) to unify the management of infrastructure, containers, migration, backup, disaster recovery, object storage, databases, security, application templates across multiple clouds. Based on VMware vCloud Director and VMware Cloud Provider Hub, VMware will roll out this capability in phases across software-defined data centers (SDCCs) running on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, or Oracle Cloud or platforms built by channel partners.
Project Path will also eventually unify operations such as customer management, customer usage, billing, and customer support across all VMware-cloud endpoints, says Bhardwaj.
VMware also announced today VMware vCloud Availability 3.5, a more efficient version of its disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) offering that now be applied to groups of virtual machines along with enhanced application mobility capabilities.
At the same time, VMware Cloud Provider Hub Services has been extended to include VMware vRealize Automation Cloud, which is comprised of the Cloud Assembly, Service Broker, and Code Stream services. That capability makes it simpler to define, aggregate and deploy applications across clouds.
Finally, Bitnami Community Catalog is now available via partners through integration with vCloud Director and Dell EMC infrastructure has now been certified for VMware Cloud Provider Pod.
In general, Bhardwaj says there are three types of channel partners VMware is engaging in the cloud. The first two are cloud service providers and traditional managed service providers that build out their own infrastructure. A third is a new generation of “asset-light” MSPs that leverage IT infrastructure resources provided by cloud service providers. In many cases, partners are employing all three models based on customer requirements, says Bhardwaj.
“The lines are getting really blurry,” says Bhardwaj.
It’s too early to say whether the phrase born of the cloud partner has become passé. However, what is clear is that when it comes to building out a managed service partners have never enjoyed more flexibility.
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