VMware, IBM expand joint options for hybrid cloud

VMware and IBM are widening the scope of their 20-year partnership to offer joint customers in regulated industries a secure path to hybrid cloud. Their plans include co-engineered cloud solutions that are aimed at helping companies in industries such as financial services, healthcare, and the public-sector to reduce the cost and risk placing mission-critical workloads in a hybrid environment.

“Roughly 25% of workloads within enterprises have moved to cloud,” said Hillery Hunter, an IBM Fellow and vice president and CTO of IBM Cloud. “That may be smaller than some people expect, but it’s an even lower number in regulated industries. Analysts have estimates as low as 5% to 13% for highly regulated organizations like banks. This means that modernization remains very much a timely topic.”

The two companies announced that IBM Cloud Satellite now supports VMware workloads. Designed for workloads that need to remain on-premises, IBM Cloud Satellite is an extension of IBM’s public cloud that can run inside an enterprise’s data center.

IBM Cloud Satellite for VMware replicates the security and management capabilities of the cloud environments that IBM operates for regulated industries and brings it to on-premises environments, says Rajeev Bhardwaj, vice president of cloud provider solutions at VMware. “So, consistent infrastructure, consistent operations, and consistent security monitoring,” Bhardwaj said.

Looking ahead, VMware and IBM have pledged an additional three years of funding for their Joint Innovation Lab, which enables the co-development of cloud offerings for VMware-based enterprise workloads. The companies launched the lab in 2018, and it has yielded 20 hybrid-cloud and AI-focused projects so far.

One example of an innovation the companies plan to bring to market is desktop-as-a-service for regulated workloads, according to Bhardwaj.

The expanded partnership also includes a new designation for IBM’s professional services division: IBM Consulting has been named a global systems integrator (GSI) partner for VMware. As a VMware GSI partner, IBM Consulting will provide services to migrate and manage workloads across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

IBM Consulting has the expertise to deliver the security, management, and reliability that’s required in hybrid and multi-cloud environments, Bhardwaj said.

“There’s a lot of complexity, there are gaps in terms of skills and talent, and you want to move fast. And that’s where IBM Consulting comes in, helping the end customers in terms of migration, modernization and managing those workloads,” Bhardwaj said.

The announcements are timed with the start of VMware Explore (formerly VMworld), the company’s flagship conference going on this week in San Francisco.