FD Insights Issue 7 | Page 22

VMworld 2014 US Roundup Thousands of IT technical professionals and business decision-makers from organisations of all sizes, and across a wide range of industries, attended VMworld 2014 US to hear a number of announcements. T he primary news centred on VMware’s new innovations for the open, agile and secure software-defined data centre. VMware EVO: RAIL, the fastest way to build and deploy a software-defined data centre, was launched, and the new vCloud Air mobile and hybrid cloud services were unveiled. These and other developments announced at the event helped to further cement VMware’s position as a leading global provider of virtualisation and cloud-based solutions. New innovations for the open, agile, secure software-defined data centre VMware announced new virtualisation, cloud management and integrated OpenStack solutions for implementing a software-defined data centre, and supporting the dynamic needs of businesses. These innovations support open frameworks as well as hybrid cloud environments based on VMware and non-VMware technologies: • VMware Integrated OpenStack - enables IT organisations to quickly and cost-effectively deliver developer-friendly OpenStack APIs and tools on top of their existing VMware infrastructure. • VMware NSX 6.1 - provides new capabilities for VMware NSX for advanced network micro-segmentation, improved hybrid cloud connectivity, equal cost multi-path (ECMP) routing and VMware vCloud Automation Center 6.1 integration. • VMware vRealize Suite - combines the capabilities of VMware’s existing cloud automation, cloud operations and cloud business management solutions into a single offering under the new VMware vRealize brand. 20 | www.firstdistribution.co.za • VMware vRealize Air Automation - a new subscription service that will enable customers to automate the delivery and on-going lifecycle management of application and infrastructure services while maintaining compliance with IT policies. • VMware vCloud Suite 5.8 - will feature enhanced policy-based provisioning capabilities that will enable customers to add compute, network, security, storage and now disaster recovery services to their applications and infrastructure. The software-defined data centre offers an agile and open architecture that is secure and cost-effective, empowering customers to manage heterogeneous clouds, hypervisors and physical environments, based on both VMware and non-VMware technologies. It supports open infrastructure frameworks and runs on any underlying hardware infrastructure, transforming security architecture through a ubiquitous virtualisation layer, and by enabling network micro-segmentation with VMware NSX network virtualization. The fastest way to build and deploy a software-defined data centre VMware EVO: RAIL is the first solution in a family of hyper-converged infrastructure offerings from VMware. It is a hyper-converged infrastructure appliance that helps customers streamline the deployment and scale-out of software-defined IT infrastructure at the speed of business. VMware EVO: RAIL will dramatically simplify the delivery of software-defined infrastructure services while lowering operating expenses. A new building block for the software-defined data centre, VMware EVO: RAIL will deliver integrated compute, network, storage and management software that enables customers to rollout and scale-out software-defined infrastructure services in a rapid and repeatable fashion. The hyper-converged infrastructure appliance will feature