The virtualisation pioneer made a raft of announcements recently as it awaits approvals for its proposed acquisition by Broadcom
Today VMware announced a suite of offerings on its revamped Tanzu Application Platform to help customers develop, deliver, and optimise apps across multiple clouds. Tanzu is described by the firm as a modular platform “underpinned by a common data platform and control, with support for open interfaces”.
The platform now encapsulates Tanzu and Aria products with new integrations and portfolio enhancements with the aim of speeding up and simplifying the delivery of enterprise application. VMware also announces new Tanzu Intelligence Services.
Of the nearly 6,000 CIOs, CISOs, and CTOs who shared their insights for VMware’s Multi-Cloud Maturity Index, a global survey conducted by market-research firm Vanson Bourne, more than half (53%) say organisations that do not adopt a multi-cloud approach risk failure.
Further, VMware says its research shows more than 70% of CIOs are developing new cloud native apps, and that apps designed for the any-cloud model have overtaken traditional apps in the enterprise.
Purnima Padmanabhan, SVP and GM, Modern Apps and Management Business Group, VMware, said, “Delivering apps at scale can be an immense undertaking and it is becoming increasingly complex.”
VMware’s Tanzu Application Platform includes, among many other things, a beta version of the Application Engine which designed to process application teams’ requests such as high availability, secure connectivity and scalability.
The idea is that the platform will embed these requirements into a curated Application Space that automatically and continuously enforces them at runtime, across different Kubernetes clusters and clouds. More information here.
Far-reaching announcements
VMware made a clutch of announcements at its VMware Explore event in Las Vegas, which the industry is still digesting. They included a new Private AI offerings to drive enterprise adoption of generative artificial intelligence, and deepened its relationship the world’s biggest maker of silicon for AI, NVIDIA, launching the VMware Private AI Foundation with the company. VMware said the Foundation and relationship with NVIDIA would put generative AI within the reach of any enterprise.
Jensen Huang, CEO and founder of NVIDIA which pioneered specialist graphic processing units (GPUs) for gaming, echoed this in his presentation at the event: “Our expanded collaboration with VMware will offer hundreds of thousands of customers – across financial services, healthcare, manufacturing and more – the full-stack software and computing they need to unlock the potential of generative AI using custom applications built with their own data.”
Earlier this year, a survey carried out by Heavy Reading on behalf of Nokia found that one of the most serious barriers to telcos integrating AI into heterogeneous networks is poor access to their own data held in legacy systems with closed interfaces.
Expanding VMware’s ecosystem
Finally, a reminder of the effort VMware invests in its ecosystem. Future Connections has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. Members of the TAP ecosystem collaborate with VMware to deliver solutions for virtualisation and cloud computing and VMware describes it as the start of the VMware journey for software and hardware vendors. Partners can develop, test, integrate, certify and validate and package products with VMware products and services, then publish their solutions on the VMware Marketplace.
Alejandro Medina, CTO, Future Connections, said, “This…reinforces our capability to develop and deliver highly customised solutions, especially for OpenRAN RIC platform”.
Approval pending
Meanwhile the wait for approvals to allow the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom for about £61 billion goes on – it was first mooted in May 2022. Last week Morning Star said it thought the probability of the deal going through had gone up and increased its estimate of its fair value estimate to $180 per share from $161. Many countries and blocs, including the US, the European Union and the UK have given their approval but China is yet to announce a decision.