Virtualisation has matured, and it's time to look at the next step.
This was the word from Matt Piercy, VMware VP: northern EMEA, speaking at the South African leg of the VMware Forum, in Johannesburg, yesterday. The event provided attendees with a snapshot of the company's latest innovations in cloud computing, virtualisation and mobility.
When VMware introduced virtualisation 15 years ago, the industry had not heard of it, but had never seen anything like the return on investment (ROI) either, said Piercy. "It used to take about $10 000 and four weeks in whatever environment you were in; virtualisation allowed you to do the same job at a cost of about $300 per virtual machine, and in two minutes. The shift was immense."
With virtualisation having become ubiquitous, VMware is looking to push innovation into a new phase, introducing three new directions: the software-defined data centre (SDDC), the hybrid cloud, and solutions for end-user computing and mobility.
"Imagine your entire data centre becomes virtualised, with everything available at the push of a button, everything managed by software," said Piercy. "What we are designing with the SDDC is a data centre that supports these modern applications, and gives IT the ability to control it, to keep your company compliant, secure, safe, and know where your data is."
The SDDC provides a springboard for VMware's vCloud Hybrid service. "Cloud applications are growing at 700% per year - this is the challenge we face," said Piercy. "The latest Gartner study shows that more than half of enterprises will have about 25% of all their technology in the cloud in some way, shape or form over the next three years."
A huge portion of enterprise cloud usage is the 'covert cloud', said Piercy, with an estimated EUR1.6 million spent on cloud subscriptions purchased by employees - without permission from IT - by each affected European business.
"There's a growing chasm between business and IT due to lack of agility," explained Piercy. "On the side of the IT team, they are focused on maintaining reliable, secure infrastructure, and have a lack of trust for critical workloads in the public cloud.
"Our approach to cloud computing is to look at this as an inside-out model: you have this data centre, you've created something that you know and trust; why should you not be able to use what public cloud has to offer, but not have to redesign the data centre, and use the standard infrastructure and standard applications that you already use? This is exactly what the software-defined data centre in hybrid cloud gives you."
IT and users are also at odds when it comes to mobility, said Piercy. "Users are adopting tech, bringing it into the business, and if you don't support them, they are finding ways to go around you."
To solve the problem, VMware has introduced a new end-user computing platform, Horizon Suite, which provides a containerised, synchronised workspace available on any device, without compromising IT security and control. "This provides more freedom to end-users, and more control to IT," said Piercy.
"The demand for cloud and virtualisation technologies is growing throughout the African continent, as we are starting to see a maturity in the needs put forward by our customers. To this end, cloud computing is delivering on the promises of lowering the cost of ownership to your technology environment, providing access to multiple services across a smaller hardware footprint, and giving customers the flexibility and agility they crave from their technology investments - factors that are having a positive impact on the growth of our own business across the continent," said Chris Norton, VMware senior regional director, southern Africa.
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