Oct 17, 2022

VMware vSphere+: Connecting On-Prem to Cloud

RAHUL KOUL
TECHNICAL ARCHITECT - CLOUD INFRA

VMware is a leader in hypervisor software for private cloud/on-prem datacenter. Most of these workloads are often deployed on silos that are spread across various locations, data centers or edge sites. They lack end-to-end visibility across the entire infrastructure deployment. This can introduce potential security vulnerabilities, adding complexity to software lifecycle management and day-to-day tasks such as provisioning resources and troubleshooting.

Concurrently, many IT leaders are being directed to enable developer productivity and deliver higher velocity processes to propel competitive advantage. This further complicates management as well as application design and development, adding inefficiencies and slowing down app development workflows.

Finally, while workloads already have the economics and locality teams want on-premises, most are not easily able to take advantage of cloud services that could add functionality such as disaster recovery or ransomware protection, and other innovation opportunities into existing onsite environments. 

VSphere+ is here to solve these problems. VMware recently introduced vSphere+ on 28th June 2022 with the purpose of bringing the benefits of cloud to on-premises workloads by deploying high-value cloud services to easily build, run, manage, and secure traditional and next-gen applications.

VMware is innovating faster than ever with VMware Cloud, built on the industry-leading stack of VMware vSphere, VMware vSAN, VMware NSX, and VMware vRealize. The company’s focus remains on delivering the most comprehensive set of solutions to build, run, manage, and secure the customers’ applications with consistency across on-premises, public clouds, and edge environments. VMware believes that these innovations will enable organizations of any size and scale to run business-critical workloads on-premises across multiple geographic locations.

An introduction to vSphere+

VMware vSphere+ brings the benefits of cloud to your on-premises workloads by delivering high-value cloud services for IT admins and developers to supercharge IT productivity and accelerate developer velocity in existing and next-gen applications. The customers would be able to get all that value without teams having to move or make any changes to existing workloads or hosts. It is completely non-disruptive to the business and designed for easy adoption.

Benefits of vSphere+

vSphere+ has access to high-value cloud services for IT admins and developers to easily build, run, manage, and secure traditional and next-gen applications. Among the benefits that organizations can expect from vSphere+ are:

  • Management: Supercharge productivity with admin services and enhance operational efficiency through a central Cloud Console.
  • Time To Market (TTM): Accelerate innovation with developer services and transform existing virtual infrastructure into an enterprise-ready Kubernetes platform.
  • Ease of Deployment: Transform on-premises infrastructure with cloud integration and quickly enable hybrid cloud benefits for on-prem workloads, without disruption.

 

“VMware vSphere+ blurs the line between on-premises and cloud,” said Vishal Gupta, CIO, Lexmark. “The combination of cloud operating model with familiar toolsets will be a big win for us.”

VMware has divided its portfolio in the following five broad categories:

  • Multi cloud
  • App Platform and modernization
  • Cloud and EDGE Infra
  • Anywhere Workspace
  • Network and Security

Most of the new products in recent years have been SaaS based. For the existing customers who had a majority of their workloads distributed across various locations, it was a challenge to utilize these new innovations at a faster speed. The benefit of innovation was not spread evenly for the majority of its on-prem customers. VSphere+ is designed to address this challenge, and help its customers bridge the connectivity between on-prem and the cloud.

“The transformation of on-premises infrastructure with cloud services is an emerging modernization trend that IDC is seeing draw significant interest from enterprises,” said Gary Chen, IDC Research Director, Software Defined Compute.

Lastly, with vSphere+ organizations will be able to adopt a subscription-based consumption model for their on-premises deployments. Customers will further benefit from a single SKU that includes all necessary components (including VMware vCenter, VMware ESXi, Tanzu Standard Runtime, and Tanzu Mission Control Essentials) and support.

Summary

VSphere+ is going to be the bridge that will help all its on-prem customers use cloud-based SaaS products in an efficient manner. This will not only drive up the business for app modernization and security but also make way for new partnerships across industries.

The option to go subscription-based consumption is the first step to changing the direction of the company in a consumer-driven world where every other competent cloud provider is already consumption-based.

For the IT admin and developers, this is surely a big benefit as it can bring more benefits without teams having to move or make any changes to existing workloads or hosts. It is completely non-disruptive to the business and designed for easy adoption.

How Microland would be able to help

Microland is a VMware partner. Our expertise in VMware solutions and services offerings help customers discover, assess, and deploy/migrate the on-prem/hybrid solutions in all flavors. We have experience and expertise in helping customers migrate to and from VMware on-prem datacenters. Below is the representation of Microland approach for Datacenter migrations.