VMware Eating the World with Software as a Service at #VMworld

As a leader on-premises enterprise infrastructure software, VMware isn’t known as a big software-as-a-service (SaaS) player. However, with their recent VMware Cloud Service announcement it would seem that selling more and more SaaS solutions is their plan for the future (and a good one, IMHO).
Today, at VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, VMware announced the availability of 6 new SaaS offerings. They are VMware Discovery, Cost Insight, NSX Cloud, Network Insight, Wavefront, and AppDefense. These new cloud services are in addition to the newly announced general availability of VMware Cloud on AWS as well as existing cloud services such as Horizon Cloud, Airwatch, and Workspace ONE. While these SaaS solutions run on VMware’s cloud, they interface with all the major public clouds including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Compute Platform (GCP).

What is VMware Discovery?

With more and more companies adopting a multi-cloud strategy (77% of VMware’s customers in 2017, up from just 56% in 2016), enterprises are looking for solutions to manage their applications running in clouds. VMware’s new Cloud Service “Discovery”, performs inventory collection across not only your on-prem vSphere infrastructure but also AWS and Azure. It allows you to search and organize your cloud inventory and centrally manage cloud credentials.
With VMware’s Discovery you are presented a holistic view of your cloud (and on-prem vSphere) server, storage, and network infrastructure:

And you can search across the inventory of these cloud (and on-prem) infrastructures:

You might be thinking – but what about managing the cost of public cloud? That’s next.

What is VMware Cost Insight?

Enterprises love the cloud’s pay-as-you-go utility pricing model but there is also the concern of spending more than you are today, with your on-prem infrastructure. As such, enterprises have the need to manage the cost of their cloud consumption very closely. VMware’s new Cloud Service, Cost Insight does exactly that.

VMware’s Cost Insight provides visibility into the cost of your current on-prem infrastructure as well as your public cloud consumption from Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. It allows you to set budgets, identify thresholds, and identify opportunities to reduce costs.

As you can see Cost Insight offers cost reporting, analysis, and comparisons.

What is VMware Network Insight?

VMware’s Network Insight Cloud Service is the SaaS version of VMware’s on-prem vRealize Network Insight (vRNI) solution that performs network analysis, performance monitoring, and troubleshooting.

With Network Insight you can analyze flows between applications tiers, troubleshoot the unexpected, and gain the insight you need to configure microsegmentation for greater security.

VMware’s Network Insight provides connectivity graphs not only on the virtual network but also on the physical network.

What is VMware Wavefront?

With VMware’s Wavefront acquisition they are now offering Wavefront as a VMware Cloud Service. With Wavefront, enterprises can perform real-time analysis of their on-premises and cloud infrastructures across applications, infrastructure, and numerous other data sources.

What is VMware NSX Cloud?

Based on VMware’s popular NSX network virtualization solution, VMware’s NSX Cloud offers a “as a service” version of NSX, providing you a centralized management point for cross-cloud connectivity.

What is VMware AppDefense?

Rounding out VMware’s new list of VMware Cloud services announced today is VMware’s new SaaS-based security offering for the enterprise – AppDefense. According to VMware’s SVP of Security, Tom Corn, VMware’s AppDefense is a unique security offering made possible by VMware’s unique position in the datacenter from the vSphere hypervisor and the virtual network visibility of vSphere. Additionally, according to Tom Corn, AppDefense is intent-based security meaning AppDefense has insight into the applications running, what is normal for those applications, and what is malicious intent of those applications. Finally, since this is a cloud service, knowledge of what is normal vs abnormal for applications can be “crowdsourced” across all enterprises using AppDefense.

AppDefense leverages not just vSphere insight but process insight (analyzing running processes inside the VM’s) but also VMware NSX network insight. When abnormal behavior is detected vRealize Automation is used to remediate.

VMware Cloud Services In Summary

With the addition of 6 new SaaS-based cloud service offerings at VMworld, VMware is quickly building up their portfolio of cloud services to become a SaaS player for the enterprise. I applaud VMware for creating some very innovative cloud services that enterprises really need – including multi-cloud analytics, multi-cloud networking, and innovative enterprise security solutions. I also applaud VMware for offering more of their products in an on-demand, pay-as-you-go model so that more enterprises can leverage these powerful solutions faster than ever before and, hopefully, in a more affordable cost model. I look forward to using these services myself and will be blogging about my experience. For more information on VMware Cloud Services visit — Cloud.VMware.com