VMworld: Firms Urged To Embrace Software Defined Data Centre And Hybrid Cloud

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger has urged businesses to be “brave” and embrace the software-defined data centre and hybrid cloud, promising that the virtualisation specialist and its ecosystem “have their back.”

Speaking at the VMworld conference in Barcelona, Gelsinger announced new management tools designed to ease the transition to a more “fluid” style of IT and detailed a number of recent developments in computing and networking.

The brand new vRealize suite is touted as a single management platform that operates across physical and virtual machines, as well as public and private cloud. It automates the release of traditional and new cloud applications across on premise and cloud infrastructure, simplifying common tasks and making the need to switch between multiple management tools redundant.

Software defined data centre

vRealize Air Compliance unsurprisingly ensures applications are compliant with the policies of a corporate network, while vRealize Code Stream makes it easier for IT departments to distribute regular software updates.

Gelsinger discussed the latest version of VMware’s main virtualisation platform vSphere 6, which is currently available as a beta with the full release next year, and VMware NSX, a virtualised network platform that aims to remedy many of the constraints that network technology is placing on data centres.

He said that as someone with a computer background, to describe NSX as the most significant update was a hard thing to say, but he felt it would address the three main issues of networking – speed, economics and security issues.

NSX establishes a virtual network in which functions like routers and switches can be moved around, deleted and restored, just like a virtual machine, and helps improve security by establishing secure zones.

‘No compromises’

Gelsinger said data centre security had traditionally been like a boiled egg as security was mainly on the outside, whereas the inside was “gooey” and unprotected – although it’s probably worth pointing out that you can have hard boiled eggs too.

“The only thing increasing faster than security spend is the cost of security breaches,” he said. “Something is architecturally wrong. We need a new approach.”

The former Intel CTO said the new features would ensure business don’t have to compromise between functionality and security and by combining on-premise and cloud virtualisation, they can have the best of both worlds.

“The world as we see it is becoming increasingly liquid – the old rigid structures are melting,” he said. “The way of doing things in the past is inappropriate for the future.

“Our approach is not to enable the ‘or’ but the ‘and’. We’re in the unique position to break down this divide.”

Other major announcements by VMware this week include the expansion of the vCloud service in Europe with a new data centre in Germany and Horizon Flex, which lets customers manage PC and Windows devices by deploying local virtual desktops.

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