US conference hails unified hybrid cloud

Described as the way of the future in information technology, unified hybrid clouds have come under the spotlight, hailed at a recent global IT conference held by US-based software company VMware.

In his opening speech at “VMworld 2015 US”, a conference on virtualisation and cloud computing whose theme this year is “Ready for Any”, VMware president and chief operating officer Carl Eschenbach described how VMware was ready to deliver on the promise of the unified hybrid cloud that will give everyone the ability to run any application on any device.

“The best way to deliver freedom, flexibility and choice is for ‘one cloud, any application, any device’ architecture,” Eschenbach told the packed hall at the conference attended by more than 23,000 at Moscone Center in San Francisco, a record for the event. This year’s conference was held from August 30 to September 3.

VMware’s platform will enable customers to create one consistent environment across the private and public clouds to run, protect and manage any cloud-native or traditional application.

Eschenbach presented the concept of “One Cloud”, which doesn’t mean choosing a single cloud vendor but with VMware’s new One Cloud, customers can continue to use the technology and apps they want.

“It’s not literally ‘one cloud’ but a system that provides for seamless integration between private and public clouds, essentially a unified hybrid cloud that is easier for IT to manage,” he said.

“You can deliver all your apps on-premises or off-premises – the distinction is eliminated.

“Now you can build, run, or develop and seamlessly federate workloads back and forth and leverage NSX for security. We do not believe anyone can deliver as powerful a unified cloud as VMware.” NSX is a VMware family of virtual-networking and security software products.

He also said VMware’s strategy was to be a partner in helping customers meet these challenges in four ways:

Run: Provide a true hybrid cloud platform that takes advantage of the software-defined data centre to run any application.

Build: Create the ability to build and embrace traditional applications, containers and cloud-native technologies to transform your business.

Deliver: Deliver any application on any device via VMware’s end-user solutions.

Secure: Define a comprehensive approach that accelerates security from the data centre all the way to the device.

Mike Benson, executive vice president and chief information officer of DirecTV, joined Eschenbach on stage to talk about his experience using VMware technology to handle some of the biggest events in DirecTV’s history, such as the championship fight between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.

DirecTV has partnered with VMware since 2008.

Benson said DirecTV had been moving to virtualise its data centres for some time, including storage and networks.

“We’ve been able to use NSX to move from manual, rigid delivery to a more software-friendly delivery to put things out there. And on top of that there’s better security.”

Raghu Raghuram, executive vice president and general manager of the software-defined data-centre division at VMware, said: “We are seeing the rise of hybrid application.

“Applications are the fuel of this digital business transformation. With our ‘one cloud, any application, any device’ strategy and our unified hybrid cloud platform, VMware is empowering the next wave of industry leaders to deliver applications with the stability, security and reliability of an enterprise, while allowing organisations to innovate with the agility of a start-up.”

Raghuram believes that it is not sufficient to have only a private or public cloud.

“You need both, but you need more. You need a layer of common networking and a management back plane that makes one a seamless extension of the other. If you do that, you have yourself a unified hybrid cloud platform,” he said.

At the conference, a demonstration showing a cross-data-centre vMotion done by Yanbing Li, vice president and general manager of storage and availability at VMware, received more applause than any other. She showed live workload migration by using Cross-Cloud vMotion to move workload from the private to public cloud on the vSphere Web Client with no down time.

“It is the same vMotion we [have all been familiar with] for years, except now you are able to accelerate, compress and move the virtual machines live from [one] location and admin domain to another location in the public provider’s domain.” She added that the process was reversible, allowing easy and fast back-and-forth movement.

 

Hybrid cloud tops in Asia 

In a media interview session, Eschenbach said he believed that seamless integration through the unified hybrid cloud was the next great thing for the market, including in Southeast Asia. “We have thousands of customers using the cloud platform today,” he said.

His view was echoed by Sanjay Mirchandani, VMware’s corporate senior vice president for Asia-Pacific and Japan.

The unified hybrid cloud is very exciting technology, the right direction and ready for the Asia market, Mirchandani told Asean journalists during an interview.

In Asia, hybrid cloud is at the forefront of what chief information officers are thinking about investing in, he added.

The Asean region has seen growth and maturity of cloud adoption, with markets like Thailand and Vietnam moving up the ranks in the 2014 Cloud Readiness Index. From accounting to mobility-enabling applications, the uptake of applications has led to accelerated adoption of both private and hybrid cloud in support of Asean enterprises’ highly mobile workforce and move towards a software-defined enterprise.

VMworld 2015 San Francisco at a glance 

- It has been 12 years since the first VMworld in San Diego, California, attended by 100 people. This year’s show was a record-breaker with more than 23,000 registered attendees

- More than 50,000 watched online

- Attendees included representatives from more than 88 countries

- More than 6,000 VM User Group members were in attendance and more than 7,000 VMware partners

- More than 12,470 people signed up for 80 DevOps sessions and there were 740 DevOps workshop participants

- 20 people who had attended all 12 VMworlds were acknowledged with great applause