VMware unveils ‘Cloud-Smart’ approach for the multi-cloud era at VMworld 2021

At VMworld 2021, VMware announced its strategy to help customers navigate the multi-cloud era with the launch of VMware Cross-Cloud services. This group of integrated services will help deliver a faster and smarter path to cloud for digital businesses, providing customers with the ability to build, run and better secure apps across any cloud with freedom and flexibility.

Today, the average organization is running roughly 500 applications to drive their business, and those apps are distributed across clouds. Seventy-five percent of VMware customers are relying on two or more public clouds, and 40% are using three or more. This multi-cloud approach increases app velocity and innovation and allows organizations to be much more agile and resilient. However, a multi-cloud environment is far more diverse, complex, and distributed than anything organizations have managed in the past. This complexity often forces trade-offs between moving fast and managing risk, resulting in slower execution while increasing costs. VMware’s strategy is built to help customers eliminate the tough choices and challenges, by giving them a powerful combination of freedom and control in their multi-cloud business.

“Multi-cloud is the digital business model for the next 20 years, as entire industries reinvent themselves,” said Raghu Raghuram, chief executive officer, VMware. “It’s no longer about a ‘cloud first’ approach – it’s about being ‘cloud smart’. Organizations should have the freedom to choose the ’right’ cloud, based on their strategic business goals. With our cloud-agnostic approach, we are uniquely positioned to meet our customers where they are and take them where they want to go. We give every organization the power to accelerate their innovation and control their own destiny in the multi-cloud era.”

“During the past year, organizations fully embraced digital transformation as they were forced to respond to many dramatic changes, accelerating their innovation timelines at record paces,” said Richard Villars, Group Vice President, IDC. “Organizations rely heavily on cloud technologies to evolve and scale as they pivot to competing in a digital-first economy. VMware’s multi-cloud-focused strategy puts it in a strong position to help enterprises take full advantage of multiple clouds and their resources in their own datacenters to improve resiliency and the trusted use of technology for delivery of better experiences and business outcomes.”

To help customers navigate the multi-cloud era, VMware Cross-Cloud services will deliver three key advantages: an accelerated journey to the cloud, cost efficiency, flexibility and control across any cloud. VMware Cross-Cloud services expands the capabilities of VMware’s product portfolio for a multi-cloud world and will allow customers to pick and choose the services needed on the desired cloud to meet evolving business demands. VMware Cross-Cloud services is comprised of five core building blocks:

• A state-of-the-art platform for building and deploying cloud-native apps;
• Cloud infrastructure for operating and running enterprise apps;
• Cloud management for monitoring and managing the performance and cost of apps across different clouds;
• Security and networking that spans across entire multi-cloud operations to connect and better secure all apps;
• A digital workspace to empower the distributed workforce along with edge solutions to deploy and manage edge-native apps.

VMware announced several new partner program innovations aligned to its customer first, partner-led strategy, including VMware Cloud Universal enabled for reseller partners, and VMware Success 360, which allows partners with master services competencies (MSCs) to, for the first time, offer their own customer success services for all the stages of the customer journey with VMware solutions. In addition, new and refreshed VMware Customer Lifecycle Incentives are designed to fuel partner growth in services and cloud.