Highlights:

  • IBM Consulting will be able to offer in-depth knowledge and experience essential for ensuring the safety, efficiency, and dependability of application deployments across multiple cloud environments
  • Launched in 2021, IBM Cloud Satellite is a management tool IBM developed to centralize the management of hybrid cloud computing environments.

VMware recently expanded its partnership with IBM to offer better support to businesses in regulated industries like financial services, healthcare, and the public sector with an aim to modernize mission-critical workloads and speed up the time to value in hybrid cloud environments.

At the VMware Explore conference, the virtualization technology company VMware announced the incorporation of IBM Consulting as one of its first Global System Integrator (GSI) partners. IBM and VMware have worked together for more than 20 years, and the former is the only company in the world that runs more VMware workloads than any other. With the latest extension, IBM will not only run the cloud environments but will also act as a consultant for the customers who use them.

“As customers go through their cloud journey, looking at multi-cloud (on-premises clouds and IBM clouds), there’s a lot of complexity to deal with,” said Rajeev Bhardwaj, VP and general manager for cloud provider solutions at VMware. “On top of that, there is a serious gap in terms of skills and talent and a dire need to move faster. This is where IBM Consulting comes in. It helps end-customers in terms of migration, modernization and managing these workloads.”

In its capacity as a GSI partner, IBM Consulting will be able to offer in-depth knowledge and experience essential to help with the security, management, and reliability of application deployments across multiple cloud environments. In the long run, this will aid businesses in delivering better customer experiences with industry standards.

IBM Cloud Satellite for VMware

It was also revealed during the event that the businesses would work together to make IBM Cloud Satellite compatible with VMware.

Launched in 2021, IBM Cloud Satellite is a management tool IBM developed to centralize the management of hybrid cloud computing environments. No matter the location of the client’s data, this feature provides an additional degree of security and consistency to the cloud services they use.

The newest update allows this solution to serve VMware workloads in a customer’s on-premises environment, bringing the safety and flexibility of IBM’s cloud services into their data center.

“IBM Satellite for Vmware brings consistent infrastructure, operations and enhanced security and innovation around regulated and financial services cloud from IBM cloud and delivers it on customer on-prem,” Bharadwaj said.

Joint innovation expansion

VMware and IBM have also agreed to extend the JIL pipeline for an additional three years.

Established in 2018, JIL is a co-innovation engine that combines the engineering, sales, marketing, and enablement skills of both firms to address their customers’ needs better. Twenty hybrid cloud and AI-focused projects have been delivered so far to enrich the capabilities of IBM cloud and meet the demands of businesses running important VMware workloads. This includes encryption for data at rest, data in transit, and data in use, as well as a VMware-enabled reference architecture built and integrated into IBM Cloud for financial services offerings.

Bharadwaj said, “We are announcing our next set of capabilities in terms of how we are going to bring joint innovations to the market. Examples include desktop-as-a-service, especially for hybrid environments and remote workforces, and accelerated application modernization on IBM Cloud with the VMware stack powering that. Then, it’s all about applications, so we’re going to be working on how do we accelerate the applications and how do we improve the resilience of the applications, meaning load-balancing capabilities, security capabilities with the web application firewall and analytics.”