FD Insights Issue 8 | Page 31

Mark Reynolds, Partner Lead at VMware Southern Africa solution stack. It also includes all of your favourite management tools, which are integrated with vCloud Air including VMware vSphere Client Plug-in, VMware vCloud Automation Center, VMware vCenter Operations Manager, VMware vCloud Connector and more. VMware expands vCloud Air in Central Europe with data centre in Germany Build from your own infrastructure At VMworld 2014 Europe, VMware announced that it plans to bring VMware vCloud Air (previously VMware vCloud Hybrid Service), hybrid cloud platform to Germany. With vCloud Air, customers can extend beyond their own data centres with ease, making your life a whole lot simpler. With it you can help clients easily position workloads on their cloud or the vCloud Air one. Added features, such as network virtualisation allows you to configure your firewalls and network like your existing cloud, and is customisable to your application and security needs. You can benefit from common identity and access management across your onsite and offsite cloud locations. Complementing VMware’s UK location and vCloud Air Network of service provider options, the new VMware-operated data centre will provide customers with a Central European location that addresses German and EU compliance and data sovereignty regulations. General availability is planned in the first quarter of 2015. Another huge benefit is the fact that VMware works with leading operating systems and applications to support ‘bring your own license’ to the cloud, and offers software for purchase on a subscription basis. In addition, VMware announced its plans for an Early Access Program for VMware vCloud Air Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand with an expanded footprint in North America and Europe. VMware vCloud Air Virtual Private Cloud will provide customers with on-demand access to vCloud Air with the swipe of a credit card. Reduce Risk and Cost of Ownership VMware’s hybrid cloud provides opportunities for partners vCloud Air offers automated replication, monitoring, and high availability of your applications without any code changes. Using the same platform your customers can already run it internally, you can also extend management tools into the cloud to leverage existing investments, processes, and expertise to lower the cost of ownership. With vCloud Air, channel partners play a key role integrating private data centres and public clouds and delivering hybrid solutions to customers. VMware vCloud Air was designed specifically with the channel community in mind. VMware distributors, solution providers and OEM partners sell vCloud Air the same way as any other VMware product. Fast Path to Cloud In addition, VMware has an existing ecosystem of more than 2,100 vCloud Air Network Service Provider Partners in Europe that operate clouds based on VMware’s technology. Included within this ecosystem are over 160 VMware Hybrid Cloud Powered Service Providers offering true workload portability between the customer site and the cloud. Reynolds says that another excellent aspect of vCloud Air is that it supports a common platform that spans both private and public cloud, and it enables your organisation to dynamically scale its IT infrastructure without changing the way you run it. In fact you can write, deploy, and manage applications in the cloud the same way you do today. VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Ave