IBM Speeds Enterprises Hybrid Cloud Adoption and Innovation by Extending Partnership with VMware

BARCELONA, Spain, Nov. 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at VMworld® Europe 2019, IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced an extended partnership with VMware to accelerate hybrid cloud innovation and adoption across global enterprises. Through new and updated technology offerings, IBM is making it easier than ever for enterprises of all sizes to more securely move VMware workloads to the cloud and leverage open technologies to modernize their business operations.

Enterprises are at a critical juncture in their cloud journey as they begin to modernize their most mission-critical workloads in search of greater speed and flexibility. With data often spread across disparate computing environments, clients are embracing a hybrid strategy in which they're enabling applications to share data across clouds and on premises environments. To date, IBM and VMware have helped nearly 2,000 enterprises on their hybrid cloud journeys, with clients such as American Airlines, Fujifilm, Veritas, Universidad Europea and others adopting IBM Cloudtm and VMware solutions. Clients who turn to IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions can access secured, enterprise-grade features like the highest certified level of key management encryption, and an established ecosystem of third-party services for backup, security, and more.ⁱ

As businesses look to optimize everything from supply chains to core banking systems, IBM and VMware help speed enterprise hybrid cloud adoption through a suite of new solutions that accelerate the migration of critical VMware workloads to IBM's public cloud in a highly secured, open environment:

• IBM announced plans to release a beta in December 2019 of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared, offering enterprises of all sizes more options for hybrid cloud adoption. A new multi-tenant solution on IBM's public cloud using VMware vCloud Director, it will be offered as an alternative to IBM's single-tenant solution that provides a client-managed environment with full control for the user. IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared can give enterprises of all sizes a flexible, managed environment where they can directly provision their virtual machines on-demand to address the needs of diverse set of projects and businesses. This will free clients from manually installing and managing updates to their virtual infrastructure or managing multiple third-party vendors, instead allowing them to focus on driving innovation. The new solution will be made available through IBM partners or directly to end users so that enterprises of all sizes can utilize IBM's public cloud with greater flexibility.
• IBM is enabling the automated deployment of Red Hat® OpenShift® directly on top of a client's VMware Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) environments in IBM's public cloud as a self-managed solution. This is designed to provide customers with an on-ramp for migrating their mission-critical workloads to the cloud by leveraging their existing VMware footprint. Beginning in December, customers will be able to deploy Kubernetes within this environment more easily in order to modernize existing VMware applications or build new applications on containers alongside their virtual machines, all while maintaining the same level of network control and security policies.
• IBM and HCL Technologies are also collaborating to help clients migrate and modernize VMware workloads on IBM's public cloud. By onboarding its customers to IBM's public cloud, HCL will be able to help them quickly modernize their business-critical workloads. At the same time, clients can maintain their cloud with the highest certified levels of security, as well as high availability, to help them with their compliance with data governance obligations. HCL will also work with IBM to transform and modernize VMware applications with Kubernetes and containers leveraging Red Hat OpenShift on IBM's public cloud. 
• IBM Cloud for VMware Mission Critical Workloads and IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services with HyTrust Data Control Integration are now generally available, enabling clients to manage and replicate data across regions to aid them in their data compliance responsibilities. IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Crypto Services and HyTrust Data Control Integration offers the industry's highest level of protection for data encryption keys. 

"Today's news highlights the continued momentum we're driving through our longstanding partnership with VMware and our shared vision to help clients adopt hybrid cloud strategies that can truly modernize their operations," said Harish Grama, general manager, IBM Public Cloud. "Enterprises are selecting IBM's public cloud as the best destination to migrate their VM workloads and drive the innovation that will transform their businesses."

"Cloud is no longer a destination but rather an operating model about which VMware and IBM have a deep understanding," said Ajay Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Cloud Provider Software business unit, VMware. "We have helped thousands of large global enterprise customers migrate tens of thousands of mission-critical workloads to the cloud and operate them at scale. Once in the IBM Cloud, these customers can transform applications in ways not possible by simply running them on-prem, taking advantage of a rich set of cloud-native services for application development, AI/ML, machine learning and IoT."

Adoption of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions continues to grow as enterprises embrace hybrid cloud strategies to help them modernize their operations. For instance, Veritas and Universidad Europea have turned to IBM's public cloud and VMware to help migrate their mission-critical workloads to the cloud:

• Veritas leveraged VMware tools to migrate their mission-critical workloads from on-premises IT infrastructure to IBM's public cloud. Veritas chose to work with IBM because it offered flexibility and control with its bare metal server offering and had a large global presence with a network backbone that allowed free data transfer between data centers. With IBM's public cloud, Veritas was able to migrate with minimal downtime, and adopt a hybrid cloud strategy for modernizing their mission-critical workloads including their customer portal, website, and other backend IT systems.
• Universidad Europea is adopting a hybrid cloud strategy for the next phase of its cloud journey by migrating its IT infrastructure to IBM public cloud. By adopting IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions, Universidad Europea will be able to upgrade and expand its virtual campus, its Universidad Europea Online and transform its offerings to address the current demands of digitally savvy students. For example, the university will be able to manage enrollment fluctuations for online courses, offer innovative digital applications to engage the student learning experience and accelerate time to market for new programs and training initiatives. 

For information on all news announcements issued at VMworld 2019 Europe, please visit https://www.ibm.com/cloud/vmworld.

About IBM Cloud
With over $20B in annual cloud revenue, IBM has built a leading enterprise hybrid cloud business. This includes a comprehensive range of as-a-service offerings, software, hardware and professional services that enable IBM to advise, move, build and manage cloud solutions across public, private and on-premises environments. Through its global network of more than 60 cloud data centers across 19 countries and 18 availability zones across 6 regions, IBM public cloud helps enterprises in all industries to meet security, resiliency, performance, and global deployment requirements. Built on an open source, multi-tenant environment, clients have secured access to an enterprise-grade IaaS and a leading PaaS that provides them with the latest developer capabilities and ready-to-go innovation engines. This includes more than 190 cloud-native APIs, such as AI, blockchain, IoT, serverless and quantum computing, and consistent function all the way to the edge.

About VMware
VMware software powers the world's complex digital infrastructure. The company's compute, cloud, mobility, networking and security offerings provide a dynamic and efficient digital foundation to over 500,000 customers globally, aided by an ecosystem of 75,000 partners. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, this year VMware celebrates twenty years of breakthrough innovation benefiting business and society. For more information, please visit https://www.vmware.com/company.html.

Statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only.

IBM and IBM Cloud are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

Red Hat® and OpenShift® are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.

ⁱ Encryption keys and cryptographic operations are protected with highest level certified HSM - with Hyper Protect Cryto services: FIPS 140-2 Level

Contact: William Schweitzer, IBM External Relations, [email protected]

SOURCE IBM