VMware, Inc. has announced new virtualization, cloud management and integrated OpenStack solutions designed to dramatically advance the industry's most complete product portfolio for implementing a software-defined data center, and supporting the dynamic needs of businesses.

The innovations announced today expand customer choice by supporting open frameworks, as well as hybrid cloud environments based on VMware and non-VMware technologies. With a software-defined data center, organizations can reduce capital expense (CAPEX) costs by up to 31 percent with name brand, industry standard hardware, and 49% using commercial off-the-shelf hardware and increase staff productivity by 100% or more in environments employing IT as a Service ¹.

"In an ever changing business environment, IT leaders need to have confidence that they can be brave and act with conviction in response to market opportunities," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware, Inc. "Empowered by software-defined technologies, businesses are now able to move with dramatic speed. This ability to drive real impact has made the software-defined data center mainstream among leading businesses. VMware continues to innovate making the software-defined data center more open, secure and agile."

VMware Integrated OpenStack: VMware Integrated OpenStack is a new solution that will enable IT organizations to quickly and cost-effectively deliver developer-friendly OpenStack APIs and tools on top of their existing VMware infrastructure. The VMware Integrated OpenStack distribution will leverage VMware's proven technologies for compute, network, storage and management to provide enterprise-class infrastructure that reduces CAPEX, operational expense (OPEX) and total cost of ownership for production-grade OpenStack deployments. With the VMware Integrated OpenStack distribution, customers can quickly stand up a complete OpenStack cloud to provide API-driven infrastructure for internal developers, and to repatriate workloads from unmanageable and insecure public clouds. IT can manage and troubleshoot an OpenStack cloud with the same familiar VMware tools they already use every day, providing significant operational cost savings and faster time-to-value.

VMware NSX™ 6.1: VMware is launching new capabilities for VMware NSX, including advanced network micro-segmentation capabilities, improved hybrid cloud connectivity, equal cost multi-path (ECMP) routing and VMware vCloud® Automation Center™ 6.1 integration. With more than 150 customers, the latest release of VMware's network virtualization platform helps improve the security, scalability and performance of the software-defined data center and hybrid cloud. With VMware NSX, customers have an economically and operationally feasible way to deploy network micro-segmentation to transform data center security architecture. VMware NSX offers several advantages over traditional network security approaches, including automated provisioning, automated move/add/change for workloads, distributed policy enforcement at every virtual interface and in-kernel, scale-out firewalling distributed to every hypervisor and baked into the platform.

VMware vRealize™ Suite: Combining the capabilities of VMware's existing cloud automation, cloud operations and cloud business management solutions into a single offering under the new VMware vRealize brand, VMware is delivering a complete software stack for managing a software-defined data center and public cloud infrastructure services (IaaS). The comprehensive management platform, purpose-built to manage heterogeneous environments and hybrid clouds, enables IT to deliver infrastructure and applications at the speed of business, but with the control IT requires.

VMware vRealize Air™ Automation: VMware also introduced the first in a family of new as a service (aaS) cloud management offerings — VMware vRealize Air™ Automation. Offered initially as a qualified beta, this new subscription service will enable customers to automate the delivery and on-going lifecycle management of application and infrastructure services while maintaining compliance with IT policies.

VMware vCloud® Suite 5.8: The VMware vCloud Suite is an integrated offering for building and managing a VMware vSphere® private cloud based on a software-defined data center architecture will enable organizations to achieve critical IT outcomes around efficiency, control, and agility. VMware vCloud Suite 5.8 will feature enhanced policy-based provisioning capabilities that will enable customers to add compute, network, security, storage and now disaster recovery services to their applications and infrastructure. The newest release of vCloud Suite 5.8 will include:

5x the scale of protection -- IT organizations can set up recovery plans scalable up to 5,000 virtual machines per VMware vCenter Server™ using array-based replication to enable enterprise-level protection--five times larger than with previous limits.

Additional integration will offer customers self-service access to provision predefined disaster recovery protection tiers to new VMs via blueprints in VMware vCloud Automation Center when using array-based replication.