VMworld 2016: VMware Cloud Foundation

I’m going to challenge myself to make this an uncharacteristically short post – summarizing what I think about the VMware Cloud Foundation announcement today, and putting it into context – including against the backdrop of our VxRack SDDC and EHC 4.0 which I talked about here.

Context:

• VMware and EMC are perpetually working hard to make our technology more consumable.  VMware Cloud Foundation makes vSphere, VSAN, NSX, and ultimately the vRealize suite – a full SDDC – easier to consume.
• Success of things like VxRail point out that it’s what many customers want.  They like our tech, but they need an “easy button”.    Ultimately well-done HCI and service models are as turnkey as you get – where the point products fade to the background, and you consume vs. build.
• We know we can do “easy” better-  that’s a never-ending journey.
• The more elements in the stack you include (NSX, vRealize) – the harder this becomes (particularly if you don’t want to slow down innovation in the point product teams)
• VMware Cloud Foundations is an evolution of efforts that started several years ago to make the SDDC stack not only more easily deployed, but MORE importantly easily sustained through ongoing patch, support, and maintenance operations.   Sustained operational simplification is worth it’s weight in gold – worth a feature or two (in fact worth that many times over).
• This capability needs to be available in a variety of consumption models.  On public clouds (like with today’s announcement with IBM Softlayer), but also on premises private clouds like VxRack SDDC.  
• When it comes to on-premises – customer will want a continuum of “build” and “buy”.   “Assemble/DYI” vs. “turnkey”.  Put another way – the range from “DYI” (VMware Cloud Foundation on VSAN-ready nodes) to turnkey (VxRack SDDC).  Definition of “turnkey” is “does the vendor take all ongoing responsibility”.
• VxRack SDDC is the EMC embodiment of Cloud Foundations on infrastructure – and the most turnkey of the Cloud Foundations on premises choices.  It is available NOW.
• We are working on jointly developing the VxRack SDDC offer – the roadmap and the go-forward engineering path is not disssimilar to our “ONE TEAM, ONE PRODUCT” approach that is forging forward with VxRail.
• We know that VxRail customers will want a simple an easy step-wise path to VxRack SDDC.  These need to be one continuum – not two things.

So – net:

1. VMware Cloud Foundations is available now.   The on-premises turnkey variant is VxRack SDDC.    The current example of a public cloud target is with IBM Softlayer.
2. VxRack SDDC will make our Enterprise Hybrid Cloud platform (full turnkey, with additional functionality customers commonly need, supported and sustained all the way up to workflows) simpler over time.  Today, with each Enterprise Hybrid Cloud release we have to do a ton of integration testing/validation and also the automation of deploying/lifecycling each part of the SDDC stack.    The goal of VMware Cloud Foundation is to make all that simple – which would let the team on Enterprise Hybrid Cloud focus on the higher-order workflows.
3. Here’s how it builds:
   1. VMware Cloud Foundations = software that simplifies deployment and lifecycle of the VMware SDDC stack on and off premises.
   2. VxRack SDDC will be the ultimate on-premises instantiation of VMware Cloud Foundation.
   3. VMware Validated Designs are simplified and build on VMware Cloud Foundations – validating combinations of things above and beyond what Cloud Foundations does on it’s own.
   4. The ultimate VMware Validated Design – with lifecycle, sustained engineering and single support is the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud.

Comments

[Anuj Sharma]

Great Post Chad .. I have below queries here as you mentioned the ultimate VMware validated design with lifecycle sustained engineering and single support is the EHC . this refers to EHC offering on vxrack so we will be having two variants of EHC one for vxrack and other for vxblock ( as this variant will have vipr controller for storage )?

[JP]

Building hybrid clouds on a VxRail base utilizing the SDDC stack with the ability to orchestrate/manage public cloud offerings on AWS and Azure is a future I'd like to see from VMware Cloud Foundations. "Easy Button" here we come!