VMworld 2019, Barcelona – VMware says it will continue to partner with Microsoft to help customers accelerate their digital transformation journeys.
Building on announcements made at Dell Technologies World earlier this year, the two companies outlined the following new initiatives:
• A new combined solution featuring VMware Workspace ONE and Microsoft Endpoint Manager to accelerate Windows 10 modern management;
• Further global expansion of the Azure VMware Solutions hybrid cloud service, with new advanced cloud migration capabilities delivered through VMware HCX;
• Certification and support for Microsoft SQL Server 2019 on VMware vSphere running in customer data centers;
• An intent to collaborate to deliver the best customer experience for Azure Data Services on VMware cloud infrastructure; and,
• Extension of Azure to branch and edge environments with VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud.
“Customers are looking for solutions that will help them simplify cloud operations and give them more flexibility and choice in how they build, run and deliver their applications,” says Sanjay Poonen, chief operating officer, Customer Operations, VMware. “We’re excited to meet the growing demands of customers for solutions that will allow them to enable any app, on multiple clouds, to any device.”
“This year, Microsoft has deepened its relationship with VMware to generate significant value for our customers across cloud, client, apps and core infrastructure,” says Jason Zander, executive vice-president, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft. “As evidenced by our news across multiple areas today, we continue to collaborate across our businesses to deliver solutions to our customers that help them advance digital transformation – no matter where they are in their journey.”
VMware Workspace ONE for Microsoft Endpoint Manager to Accelerate Windows 10 Modern Management
VMware and Microsoft are working together to enable customers’ rapid move to modern management solutions that are built on cloud intelligence and automate Windows 10 management tasks to help IT spend their time in the most impactful ways. Building on Microsoft’s announcement of Microsoft Endpoint Manager at Microsoft Ignite 2019, VMware announced it will partner with Microsoft to develop a new solution – VMware Workspace ONE for Microsoft Endpoint Manager – to help enable modern management for Windows 10 devices.
Workspace ONE for Microsoft Endpoint Manager will enable customers to take advantage of Workspace ONE’s digital workspace platform with modern management for the Windows desktop and data and cloud insights built on top of Microsoft Endpoint Manager. Workspace ONE will continue to deliver to customers enterprise-ready services including – multi-platform management depth, unified app catalog experience, Intelligence analytics and automation, multi-tenancy, industry-leading VDI and apps, and a zero-trust security framework.
The first phase of this integration is expected to be made available by the middle of calendar year 2020 and will focus on maximising employee experience for Workspace ONE for Microsoft Endpoint Manager customers – including unique onboarding workflows, proactive employee experience management, and self-service access to enterprise services and apps. This is planned to become VMware’s recommended solution for mutual Workspace ONE and Microsoft Endpoint Manager customers to manage Windows 10 devices. VMware will also provide migration assistance to these customers to adopt this new integrated solution, once available.
In addition, VMware will extend conditional access for Microsoft 365 apps and services via Workspace ONE and integration with Microsoft Endpoint Manager and Azure Active Directory Premium across BYO use cases, which will be available as a tech preview in Q4 FY20. VMware will extend Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop capabilities to customers using Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure. Available in tech preview in Q4 FY20, Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure will add industry-leading functionality to the benefits that customers can only receive on Azure with Windows Virtual Desktop, such as Windows 10 Enterprise multi-session and up to three years of free Extended Security Updates for Windows 7.
Azure VMware Solutions Momentum
Azure VMware Solutions is a Microsoft first-party service that enables customers to run VMware workloads natively on Azure and supports customers’ hybrid cloud strategies. Because this is built on the consistent infrastructure of VMware Cloud Foundation, along with underlying technology from VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) partners, customers can seamlessly migrate or extend VMware workloads across on-premises and Azure environments without the cost, effort or risk of re-architecting applications or re-tooling operations.
Since its launch in June 2019, the companies have seen positive customer reception, especially across retail, healthcare, and public sector markets. Based on this interest, the Azure VMware Solutions global footprint is expanding. Today, services are live in North America and Europe. Through the first half of 2020, services are planned to be available in major Azure data centers in Japan, Southeast Asia, Australia along with further expansion in Europe and North America.
To help accelerate cloud migration strategies, the company says that Azure VMware Solutions will now be supported by VMware HCX, enabling customers to seamlessly move large volumes of applications to Azure, with little to no downtime. The addition of VMware HCX to Azure VMware Solutions gives a more secure and simple solution to execute large scale live migrations, while also avoiding the cost, complexity, and risk typically associated with refactoring applications for the cloud. With HCX, customers can conduct live vMotion migrations of thousands of VMs, even those not based on vSphere, to the cloud, and between clouds. This combined solution gives customers a powerful platform for aligning workloads to the optimal environment for every app across diverse infrastructures.
SQL Server 2019 on VMware vSphere and Azure Data Services on VMware Cloud Infrastructure
Another area of collaboration between the two companies is SQL Server 2019 on VMware vSphere. This initiative will allow customers to leverage SQL Server 2019 for all of their applications, deployed consistently across their hybrid cloud environments, on proven VMware infrastructure. Additionally, integration with VMware vSphere features such as vMotion and Storage vMotion will maximize High Availability/Disaster Recovery (HA/DR) capabilities.
Project Pacific, now in beta, will unite Kubernetes containers and virtual machines, providing easy self-serve access to developer services while enabling central control of resources. At Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft announced Azure Arc that enables Azure Data Services to run on any customer environment. As part of the companies’ ongoing collaboration, VMware and Microsoft are working to deliver the best customer experience for Azure Data Services on VMware cloud infrastructure.
Bringing Azure to the Branch with VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud
Enterprises moving application workloads to Azure need a WAN solution to connect their branches to Azure in an automated, fast and more secure manner. VMware SD-WAN by VeloCloud simplifies branch connections to Azure via its network of cloud gateways to deliver Azure services all the way from the cloud to the edge.
VMware shared details of deeper integration between Azure and the VMware gateways deployed inside Azure, offering end-to-end high performance and optimized access from enterprise branches to their workloads on Azure. This means that an enterprise customer can enable end-to-end connectivity with more assured performance from their branch users to their applications running in Azure.
The VMware gateways are the first hop from the branch to the cloud for any traffic and any workload. VMware has introduced a series of strategic partnerships and provided integrated services that can be applied to all the traffic flowing through these gateways, based on business policies. These services include web security, firewall IDS/IPS, analytics and “mid mile connectivity” solutions. Deploying these solutions is highly automated and centrally managed by VMware.