VMware Inc. one of the world’s leaders in enterprise software innovation, held its always eagerly anticipated flagship conference last week. Only this time, it was once again held in person after a two-year pandemic break and rebranded from VMworld to VMware Explore 2022.
The conference was held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, and it focused primarily on the ever-evolving multi-cloud era. It also shone the spotlight on the different technologies shaping the rapidly digitalising world and highlighted the industry experts and developer communities making innovation possible in the digital age.
An Ongoing Cloud Journey: From Chaotic to Smart
Raghu Raghuram, Chief Executive Officer at VMware formally kicked off the event with a keynote that briefly covered the cloud’s nearly decade-long history and emphasised its key role in enabling an always-on digital world. Raghuram also spoke about VMware’s robust and strategic partner ecosystem, which is offering more and more ways for its clients worldwide to drive innovation, scale their business and transform customer experiences.
“All of you [businesses and organisations] are running the same race—and that is a race to transform your business to become digitally smart,” Raghuram noted in his keynote, “From Cloud Chaos to Cloud Smart.” “You’re driving the acceleration of innovation velocity, that’s a key priority. You’re driving the next-generation of automation using Machine-Learning, and that is a key priority. And you’re driving the next great leap in employee productivity. This is what ‘digitally smart’ means, and this is what set off the cloud journey more than a decade ago.”
This journey, Raghuram clarifies, was far from smooth sailing. In fact, it is still in what Raghuram calls the “cloud chaos” phase, where, ironically, the sheer number of cloud choices has only resulted in greater complexity. And according to a VMware survey, as much as 80% of organisations globally are in a state of cloud chaos, which is keeping enterprises from maximising the wide-ranging benefits of the cloud.
The goal, according to Raghuram, is to transition from cloud chaos to cloud smart, a phase marked by sophistication and maturity, as well as the freedom to choose the right cloud for the right apps based on their needs. Organisations in the cloud smart phase—and there are a few that have entered it—will be able to accelerate their app development, maintain consistency in their infrastructure and achieve frictionless experience. They will also be well on their way to becoming a digitally smart enterprise, which should be the ultimate goal of any and all organisations.
VMware: Focused on Helping Enterprises Be Cloud Smart
VMware Explore highlighted the company’s ongoing shift from being a virtualisation vendor to a multi-cloud infrastructure provider, and it took a major step towards this goal with the release of Aria. VMware’s proprietary suite of multi-cloud management tools, Aria aims to unify hybrid and multi-cloud management to address organisations’ increasing dependence on multiple clouds.
VMware also unveiled at VMware Explore updates to vSphere, the company’s server platform, and vSAN, VMware’s storage virtualisation tool. These updates will add support for new hardware that is soon to become commonplace fixtures in enterprise data centres of the future. They are also expected to further improve VMware’s interoperability with hyperscalers, like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Incidentally, VMware reinforced its commitment to both Azure and AWS, as well as to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Oracle Cloud, with the announcement of new products specifically for the four hyperscalers. The biggest beneficiary, however, figures to be AWS, with the company rolling out VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery and Ransomware Recovery, VMware Cloud Flex Compute and VMware Cloud Flex Storage with support for Amazon FSx. Other new products include vRealize Log Insight Cloud for Azure and Tanzu Standard support for both GCP and Oracle Cloud—with API/CLI integration for GCP also in the pipeline.
Azure is also getting an upgrade from VMware with updates to Horizon Cloud, VMware’s Azure-only virtualisation service. These updates further simplify this Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) product and, more importantly, enable more support for users, making it ideal for enterprises supporting a highly distributed workforce. The upgrades, according to VMware, will come at no additional costs.
As the conference went on, VMware announced several innovations for its ever-expanding networking and security portfolio, including, Project Northstar (multi-cloud networking and security), upgrades to Carbon Black Cloud (expanded network detection and visibility), Project Trinidad (an enhancement of VMware’s API security and analytics) and Project Watch (multi-cloud networking and security).
High Hopes for Hybrid
While VMware Explore was noticeably cloud-centric, it nonetheless highlighted key innovations that can enhance digital experiences and bridge organisations towards becoming digitally smart enterprises in the future. One of these innovations is Unified Endpoint Management (UEM), which is crucial in keeping the work-anywhere, work-anytime paradigm secure and in ensuring its long-term viability.
VMware has its own UEM solution, Workspace One, and it got major upgrades at VMware Explore. Among the notable upgrades are a vastly improved Freestyle Orchestrator and Workspace One’s low-code automation. With the announced updates, Freestyle Orchestrator will now offer better support for third-party apps and for both Android and iOS devices and further simplify the process of automating a range of tasks.
Additionally, VMware upgraded Workspace One’s user support feature, thus enabling it to support more users on a single Windows device. This expanded support, according to VMware, will be extremely useful for frontline work and hybrid work offices using shared desks and is already available for deployments based on Azure Active Directory. Organisations relying on an on-premises Active Directory, however, will have to wait until later this year before they can use this expanded capability.
The company took the opportunity to add several innovations and upgrades to its already comprehensive portfolio of Digital Employee Experience (DEX) solutions. First, DEX solutions now include support for devices not only managed by Workspace One but also those managed by VMware Horizon and third-parties, frontline devices and even unmanaged devices. With this expansion, VMware will be looking to better support frontline, hybrid and remote workers and also provide more encompassing endpoint analytics for improved and more informed troubleshooting.
Second, VMware has announced enhancements to its service desk experience with Intelligence Guided Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and ITSM Connector. These upgrades aim to scale the helpdesk so it can adequately support more devices, apps and networks, and Guided RCA can make this possible through Machine-Learning algorithms. This enhanced service desk experience will enable IT to resolve problems more quickly, automate processes to prevent the reoccurrence of issues and restore productivity for affected workers almost immediately.
Third, attendees saw the launch of the Digital Employee Experience Management (DEEM) Frontline Solutions Pack, which organisations can use to provide support for their frontline workforce. The DEEM Frontline Solutions help in, among other things, optimising device performance, monitoring critical application workflows, ensuring shared devices accountability and measuring mission-critical deployments.
Packed Full of Innovation, Updates and Learning Sessions
Aside from upgrade launches, product releases and collaboration announcements, VMware’s annual flagship conference also featured tutorials and learning sessions about a range of technology-related topics, including digital tools for hybrid work and Artificial Intelligence.
In all, VMware Explore 2022 saw over 800 keynotes, tutorials and breakout sessions delivered by VMware executives and experts from VMware clients and partners. The event’s sponsors—a who’s who of the world’s biggest tech titans, including NVIDIA, Dell Technologies, NetApp and AWS—also presented their own innovations at the three-day conference.
