The new managed service is aimed at enterprises with hybrid cloud deployments
IBM has announced the rollout of IBM Cloud for VMware as a Service. The new solution combines IBM’s hybrid cloud deployment efforts with VMware capabilities, in an effort to help IBM’s customers modernize workloads, the companies said in a joint blog post on IBM’s website.
The new offering integrates VMware Cloud with IBM’s own managed Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The solution enables enterprises to scale resources up and down without worrying about over-procurement or under-utilization, expanding with pay-as-you-go pricing models rather than using dedicated infrastructure or being locked into long-term contracts. IBM’s global cloud infrastructure helps businesses manage their deployments in the geographical areas they need, IBM noted. IBM and VMware promise a more streamlined approach to enterprise hybrid cloud deployments with the new arrangement.
IBM said the service was designed to help clients reduce complexity and reduce their risk footprint as well. “By deploying new or existing VMware workloads in a hybrid cloud architecture with IBM Cloud, you can achieve substantial benefits while using the same familiar tools, resources and capabilities you currently employ with on-premises VMware deployments,” said IBM.
IBM touts regulatory support and compliance frameworks for the new service. “This is designed to help ensure clients can mitigate third- and fourth-party risk as they move to the cloud with confidence, adhering to regulations and compliance with controls embedded in IBM Cloud,” said Rohit Badlaney, IBM Cloud’s VP of product management and strategy.
Hybrid cloud efforts are now central to IBM’s business. Over the summer, the company counted more than 4,000 hybrid cloud platform clients, accounting for more than one-third of IBM’s total revenue. What’s more, Arvind Krishna, IBM’s chairman and CEO, told analysts that AI and hybrid cloud technology were clear technology differentiators for IBM.
“Hybrid cloud is about offering clients a platform that can straddle multiple public clouds, private clouds, and on-premise properties, all the way to the edge,” said Krishna.
IBM’s announcement, made at last week’s VMware Explore Europe event in Barcelona, Spain, is a bookend of sorts. IBM and VMware previously underscored an expanded partnership at VMware Explore in San Francisco in September. At that event, IBM announced its consulting business had been certified as a VMware Global Systems Integrator (GSI). The companies said the expanded partnership would help them address clients in regulated industries such as banking, healthcare and public sector.
VMware continues to flex its virtualization muscles for telcos with efforts like the RIC testbed as a service it announced with Viavi Solutions last week. The two companies are developing the service to accelerate Open RAN adoption through the development of standardized frameworks and metrics for RIC testing, they said.
The centerpieces of the testbed as a service are VIAVI’s own TeraVM RIC Test and the VMware RIC itself. TeraVM RIC Test is a virtualized test tool that provides a way for developers to test RAN traffic scenarios in real time to test the functions of the RIC, without needing to deploy on an actual RAN. TeraVM RIC Test provides emulated RAN measurements to the RIC, making changes based on the outputs from the RIC. Viavi says this simplifies the process of improving RAN efficiency.
