Early in 2023, the Cross-Cloud Services team started the Multi-Cloud Expedition – a Livestream series airing monthly on LinkedIn. In the Expedition, we’ve brought together industry and VMware subject matter experts to discuss and demo solutions to the most pressing multi-cloud challenges today. At VMware Explore Barcelona 2023, we are continuing the discussion focusing on VMware Private AI. We will review what was announced at VMware Explore Las Vegas and share more on announcements planned in Barcelona.

Tune in as host Alexander Romero, Senior Director of Cross-Cloud Services at VMware, is joined by Justin Murray, Technical Marketing Architect plus another executive from VMware’s Cloud Infrastructure Business Group. They will review and discuss new partnerships in the new VMware Private AI ecosystem.

If you are attending VMware Explore Barcelona, please look for the Cross-Cloud Services team at:

• Specific CCS Breakouts – The Most Comprehensive Demo of VMware Multi-Cloud Products in One Place; Top 5 Customer Multi-Cloud Challenges with Key Insights from VMware and Deloitte (Full list available here.)
• Expo Floor Theater presentations on Solving the Multi-Cloud Problem (VBT2626BCN).
• Meet the Experts RoundTable (CCSM2310BCN)
• The Cross-Cloud Café – Just across from the VMware Demo Stand, you can enjoy a free barista-made espresso and meet 1-on-1 with a VMware solution specialist.

Follow this event on LinkedIn to receive notifications!

Miss an episode? Check out our blog site for episode details and recording links: https://crosscloud.vmware.com/multi-cloud-expedition

The post The Multi-Cloud Expedition Episode 12: Live from VMware Explore Barcelona 2023 – More about VMware Private AI appeared first on Multi-Cloud Blog.

Enterprises today have a full spectrum of choices for their application infrastructure, whether that’s hyperscale cloud provider services, on-premises private clouds, or hybrid cloud services like VMware Cloud. What most are missing is the optimization of where they run workloads, so that each exists in the best-fit cloud. In an optimized state, enterprises can achieve cost-efficiency, retain visibility over their assets, and serve the needs of the business for agility and modernization.

The challenge is that this takes planning, auditing, and more art than science as no two organizations have the same application landscape. In the eleventh episode of the Multi-Cloud Expedition, we’re joined by Microsoft in a discussion on achieving enterprise success with workload placement, to attain an optimized architecture.

The Multi-Cloud Expedition is a Livestream series airing monthly on LinkedIn providing opportunities for IT professionals to learn more about the best practices, technologies, and solutions VMware offers for multi-cloud management. With each broadcast, VMware and industry experts tackle a specific topic, providing real-life scenarios and product demonstrations that showcase the challenges that customers face and how VMware can help overcome these challenges.

This session will walk through common scenarios for workload placement and the top considerations for each environment – public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Key considerations we’ll discuss include:

• Business demands for agility and modernization
• Cost of compute, network, storage
• Privacy, security, and compliance
• Visibility and governance of enterprise assets
• Performance for optimal customer experience

Follow this event on LinkedIn to receive notifications!

The Multi-Cloud Expedition Livestream Series Continues!

Monthly we’re gearing up for a new edition of the Multi-Cloud Expedition.

Miss an episode? Check out our blog site for episode details and recording links: https://crosscloud.vmware.com/multi-cloud-expedition

Wondering what’s next? Here’s what we’re planning (subject to change): 

10. September 27: VMware’s Take on AI Ready Infrastructure
11. October 25: Optimizing Multi-Cloud Workload Placement
12. November 8: Live from VMware Explore Barcelona 2023 – More about VMware Private AI!

The post The Multi-Cloud Expedition Episode 11: Optimizing Multi-Cloud Workload Placement appeared first on Multi-Cloud Blog.

At VMware Explore Las Vegas,  VMware President, Summit Dhawan introduced 5 new, major innovations that strengthen VMware’s Cloud and Edge Infrastructure offering, part of VMware Cross-Cloud services.  VMware Cross-Cloud services give you standardized ways to build, operate, access, and secure your applications on any cloud. 

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), the heart of VMware’s Cloud and Edge infrastructure offering, delivers a complete, virtualized cloud stack that includes compute (VMware vSphere), storage (VMware vSAN), networking (VMware NSX) and management (VMware Aria) capabilities.  VMware Cloud, built on VCF, runs on every cloud that matters to your business including private cloud, public cloud, partner cloud, and edge cloud. 

The five major announcements that Summit addressed are recapped for you below:

Introducing VMware VSAN MAX

Continuing VMware’s commitment to support customers’ most critical workloads with flexibility, performance, and efficiency, VMware introduced vSAN MAX.  vSAN MAX delivers a new, optional disaggregated storage deployment model built on vSAN Express Storage Architecture and leveraging VSAN’s proven and highly efficient storage model.  This new offering supports the needs of organizations with data intensive applications (such as emerging AI/ML apps) that need to be able to scale storage independent of compute considerations. 

Watch here: https://youtu.be/J2gA_R-lJRs?si=LByPOwKl7L5eX29m&t=35

VMware Cloud Foundation Enhancements

Major announcement number two focused on new capabilities in VCF that allow cloud administrators to seamlessly upgrade to the latest version of VCF.  The new upgrade model makes is significantly easier to upgrade the entire virtual cloud infrastructure stack with upgrades being achieved at a speed that is three times faster than previous version upgrades.  This new upgrade capability greatly simplifies the lives of cloud administrators who are responsible for making sure that their end users always have access to the latest and most innovative infrastructure offerings that support the building and running of applications on any cloud.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/J2gA_R-lJRs?si=LByPOwKl7L5eX29m&t=63

Introducing VMware NSX+

As part of VMware’s commitment of simplifying multi-cloud use, VMware introduced VMware NSX+, a new multi-cloud service offering.  NSX+ is a cloud-delivered networking, security, and advanced load balancing as-a-service offering for NSX that allows networking, security, and operations teams to consume and operate NSX services from a single cloud console across private, hybrid, and public clouds. NSX+ enables consistent policy management, unified visibility, network detection and response, advanced load balancing, and simplified cloud operations, helping organizations accelerate multi-cloud deployments at scale.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/J2gA_R-lJRs?si=LByPOwKl7L5eX29m&t=114

Introducing Virtual Private Cloud networking (delivered as part of NSX+)

Announcement number four focused on how cloud administrators can now quickly and easily deliver to their developers and other end-users, virtual private clouds.  This new capability allows cloud administrators to deliver an environment that provides full isolation of networking, security, and other services to multiple tenants on a shared VMware Cloud infrastructure managed by a single global NSX interface.  Cloud administrators can also maintain supervisory control and set operational guardrails on a per VPC basis; helping to ensure that changes made in one VPC environment have no impact on other cloud tenants.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/J2gA_R-lJRs?si=LByPOwKl7L5eX29m&t=160

Enhancements To VMware Ransomware Recovery solution

VMware Ransomware Recovery is an award-winning VMware Cloud service designed to help organizations recover from fileless attacks using behavioral analysis of powered-on VMs in cloud-based isolated recovery environments (IREs).  Announcement number five addressed enhancements to this offering.  Specifically, VMware announced the availability of capabilities that support simultaneous multi-VM recovery operations.  This same solution will also deliver by end of the fiscal quarter, new capabilities that enable customers to run production workloads in the cloud until forensics are completed and the on-premises datacenter is fortified.

Watch here: https://youtu.be/J2gA_R-lJRs?si=LByPOwKl7L5eX29m&t=185

Missed Las Vegas?

VMware Explore will continue beyond Vegas with upcoming events scheduled for Europe and Asia.  Check VMware.com for locations and registration information.  You can also view much of the content from VMware Explore Las Vegas in the Explore Video Library.

The post Multi-Cloud Infrastructure: Five New Innovations appeared first on Multi-Cloud Blog.

There is no denying the potential benefit AI capabilities will have on business outcomes as the technology and utilization of it matures.  On the one hand this is an amazing technical capability which has tremendous potential.  On the other hand, it is another form of a compute resource that must be managed similar to historical compute resources and intrinsically tied to financial measures with renewed data security challenges. 

Since it’s an emerging technology, lack of standardization, automation, and IT skills plus privacy concerns are slowing time to value for AI infrastructure requests. This creates a bottleneck that slows down the deployment of AI workloads and makes it difficult to manage and optimize the resources allocated to them. To help tackle these challenges, VMware announced the launch of VMware Private AI. This architectural approach for AI services enables privacy and control of corporate data, choice of open source and commercial AI solutions, quick time-to-value, and integrated security and management. With VMware Private AI, you get the flexibility to run a range of AI solutions for your environment and you can deploy with confidence, knowing that VMware has built partnerships with the leading AI providers.

VMware and NVIDIA also announced our plans to collaborate to develop a fully integrated Generative AI platform called VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA. This platform will enable enterprises to fine-tune LLM models and run inference workloads in their data centers, addressing privacy, choice, cost, performance, and compliance concerns. The platform will include the NVIDIA NeMo framework, NVIDIA LLMs, and other community models (such as Hugging face) running on VMware Cloud Foundation. We will share more information on this exciting platform which will be launched in early 2024. 

In this tenth episode of the Multi-Cloud Expedition, join host Alexander Romero, Senior Director of Cross-Cloud Services at VMware, as he leads a discussion around VMware Private AI and our partnership with NVIDIA enabling IT teams to embrace generative AI with privacy, choice, cost management, performance, and compliance. The Multi-Cloud Expedition is a Livestream series airing monthly on LinkedIn providing opportunities for IT professionals to learn more about the best practices, technologies, and solutions VMware offers for multi-cloud management. With each broadcast, VMware and industry experts tackle a specific topic, providing real-life scenarios and product demonstrations that showcase the challenges that customers face and how VMware can help overcome these challenges.

Join us and learn how VMware and NVIDIA can accelerate AI model deployments, enhance productivity, optimize performance, offer flexibility, and safeguard privacy.

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The Multi-Cloud Expedition Episode 10: VMware’s Take on AI Ready Infrastructure Recap

Chapter Segments:

0:14 – Host Welcome, Alexander Romero, Sr. Director Cross-Cloud Services: What is the Multi-Cloud Expedition? Customer Journey from cloud first to cloud smart.

2:09 – Overview of this episode: VMware’s Take on AI Ready Infrastructure.

2:52 – Industry Expert Intro: Charlie Huang, NVIDIA Product Management & Marketing; Accelerated Computing & Artificial Intelligence  

4:46 – Evolution of AI going from Predictive to Generative AI. Example ChatGPT.

7:14 – Industry drivers as the catalyst for exponential interest in Generative AI – finding cancer faster or personalizing shopping experiences.

10:36 – AI and the use of GPUs is not new. VMware and NVIDIA innovation history.

14:07 – How do enterprises use HuggingFace and OpenAI model? And how NVIDIA solutions fit in the industry.

17:23 – Keeping enterprise data secure and private for regulations and competitive advantage.

18:55 – SME Intro: Shobhit Bhutani, VMware Principal Product Marketing Manager

20:48 – Challenges of Generative AI today, mainly privacy. Avoid intellectual property breeches while seeing benefits of LLM and AI.

26:04 – Avoiding lock in – customers want choice in AI journey like they have with multi-cloud with performance and compliance while managing costs.

31:55 – How VMware helps. Announcement of VMware Private AI.  

25:44 – VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA announced at VMware Explore Las Vegas (avail early 2024). Generative AI easy button.

40:29 – Customer example: Helping build a Generative AI model for a large format retailer.

43:16 – Demo: NVIDIA and VMware Generative AI Integration into Enterprise Clouds.

46:57 – Demo: How allocating GPUs within vSphere looks for VI Admins. Q&A with moderator Leanne Jones, Director Cross-Cloud Services  

48:45 – Q&A: What other eco system partners does VMware work with beyond NVIDIA?

51:22 – Q&A: Customer examples making progress today with AI.

53:40 – How to get started today? Reference architecture for VMware Private AI.

55:48 – Wrap up and topic review including key links to learn more around VMware AI solutions:

• https://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/ai-ml.html
• https://core.vmware.com/blog/using-nvidias-aiml-frameworks-generative-ai-vmware-vsphere
• https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2023/08/introducing-vmware-private-ai-foundation.html

Special thank you to Justin Murray for creating the demos and Shannon Waddell for producing.

The Multi-Cloud Expedition Livestream Series Continues!

The Multi-Cloud Expedition starting in February of 2023. Miss an episode? Check out our blog site for episode details and recording links: https://crosscloud.vmware.com/multi-cloud-expedition

Wondering what’s next? Here’s what we’re planning (subject to change): 

10. September 27: VMware’s Take on AI Ready Infrastructure
11. October 25: Optimizing Multi-Cloud Workload Placement
12. November 8: Live from VMware Explore Barcelona 2023 – More about VMware Private AI!

The post The Multi-Cloud Expedition Episode 10: VMware’s Take on AI Ready Infrastructure appeared first on Multi-Cloud Blog.

Introduction

Multi-cloud adoption is accelerating, with businesses seeking greater agility, flexibility and choice of cloud services. While public cloud usage continues to grow, enterprises are recognizing that not all workloads belong in the public cloud. To operate efficiently at scale, companies are adopting hybrid and multi-cloud strategies that span private clouds, public clouds and the edge.

But maximizing the value of multi-cloud environments remains challenging. Using multiple clouds in silos creates operational complexity. There is lack of consistency across cloud platforms. Security, compliance and data governance become extremely difficult across heterogeneous infrastructure. And costs can spiral out of control.

VMware is helping enterprises succeed in this multi-cloud era, with a software platform to build, run, manage, connect and protect any app on any cloud. Organizations can simplify operations, reduce costs, and deliver security everywhere cloud meets app.

The VMware Cross-Cloud Approach: Consistency Across Environments

A fundamental challenge with multi-cloud is the lack of consistency. Every hyperscale cloud has a different operating model, networking paradigm and services. This makes it extremely difficult to manage cloud environments together.

VMware Cloud provides a common architecture that integrates with all major public clouds, including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. This enables IT teams to apply the same operations, policies, networking and security across heterogeneous cloud environments. Workloads can be deployed and migrated seamlessly to the optimal cloud platform based on application needs.

With VMware Cross-Cloud services, enterprises can extend existing on-premises infrastructure to public clouds. This provides a consistent operating model and customer experience regardless of where apps and services are running.

Embrace Agility, Fuel Innovation

Say goodbye to vendor lock-in and embrace the power of choice. The Cross-Cloud Approach enables you to select the best services from specific cloud vendors, ensuring your cloud environment aligns precisely with your unique requirements. Achieve regional compliance effortlessly and fortify resilience across your entire cloud property. The Cross-Cloud Approach modernizes your IT infrastructure, positioning your enterprise for unparalleled agility, versatility, and cost reductions. It fosters an environment that accelerates innovation, propelling your business towards greater heights. This consolidated approach empowers you to focus on what matters most—driving business success.

Flexibility and Choice: The Power to Run Any App on Any Cloud

In a multi-cloud environment, flexibility is critical. Companies need the freedom to choose where to run workloads based on technical requirements, geographic needs, regulatory factors and other considerations.

The VMware application platform provides portability for both traditional and modern apps. With VMware Tanzu, enterprises can build and deploy cloud-native apps that can run anywhere. VMware HCX lets you migrate VMs to any cloud or data center without re-architecting apps.

This encapsulates apps and infrastructure from the underlying cloud hardware. So organizations can move workloads between environments at will to respond to changing needs and optimize costs.

Multi-Cloud Cost Optimization: Visibility and Control to Reduce Waste

As companies scale cloud usage, costs can spiral out of control. In a 2021 survey, 82% of respondents said their cloud spending exceeded budgets. Getting deep visibility into usage, spend and performance across heterogeneous clouds is extremely challenging.

VMware gives finance teams the data they need to identify waste and make informed decisions about workload placement. Automated policy-based placement optimizes spending by deploying apps on the most efficient and cost-effective cloud platform.

With robust visibility and control over the entire cloud footprint, enterprises can eliminate resource contention and right-size workloads to avoid over-provisioning. VMware ensures you only pay for the cloud resources you truly need.

Security That Spans the Full Technology Stack

In multi-cloud environments, security becomes exponentially more difficult with every cloud added. Visibility is limited and policies are inconsistent. Meanwhile, data is distributed across multiple clouds increasing vulnerability.

VMware embeds end-to-end security across the full application lifecycle – from code to cloud to edge. This delivers defense-in-depth with context-aware rules. Security profiles consistently follow workloads to minimize rework, with granular isolation of network traffic.

With VMware, multi-cloud security is intrinsic rather than bolted on. This integrated approach provides comprehensive protection while enabling innovation and operational efficiency.

The Future of Multi-Cloud

Multi-cloud adoption is clearly accelerating as organizations recognize the benefits of choice and flexibility. But complexity remains a significant barrier. VMware is committed to making multi-cloud environments simple, efficient and secure for enterprises.

Looking ahead, VMware sees a world where apps and data can move seamlessly to any cloud or edge location. Dynamic allocation of resources will respond in real-time to changing demands. And intrinsic security will be embedded everywhere. This will empower companies to leverage multi-cloud to drive innovation and deliver amazing digital experiences.

Resources:

Explore Cross Cloud Services: https://www.vmware.com/cross-cloud-services.html

Download the White Paper: The Era of Multi-Cloud Services Has Arrived https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/docs/vmware-multi-cloud-services-white-paper.pdf

The post The Path to Multi-Cloud Success: How VMware Helps Enterprises Win in the Multi-Cloud Era appeared first on Multi-Cloud Blog.

The excitement and anticipation of VMware Explore 2023 Las Vegas grows stronger every day. So much to see and learn in so little time. An extra energy boost might be needed to see it all, with enough left over for the Vegas strip. If a premium coffee service and lively conversation will keep you going, look no further than the VMware Cross-Cloud Café, located on the Expo floor, booth #105.

The VMware Cross-Cloud Café is a new experience at VMware Explore! You will sit down with a VMware solution specialist and have a 1-on-1 conversation. Place your free coffee order with our barista and relax as a specialist walks you through a learning topic. Each café conversation is only 10 minutes, and you can return as often as you like.  You will also have the option to schedule a time for your café conversation.

You will be able to pick a topic from within 4 learning track options:

1. Cloud & Edge Infrastructure
2. Modern Applications & Cloud Management
3. Networking & Security
4. Hybrid Workforce

The topics within each learning track are not deep-dive technical. These short discussions will focus on the benefits of each solution and provide suggestions for learning more. You will see a demo and possibly do some whiteboarding together. We know you will learn something new and leave with an espresso boost.

But what if you cannot attend VMware Explore 2023? We have you covered. Visit https://crosscloud.vmware.com, and all café presentations and demos will be available online as of Aug 21st, 2023

The VMware Cross-Cloud Café is open during Expo hours.

Please stop by and see us on the Expo floor. Booth #105.  

The post Get Cross-Cloud Caffeinated at VMware Explore 2023 Las Vegas appeared first on Multi-Cloud Blog.

In the last post of this series, we covered the best practices you can implement to achieve consistent security and governance for your multi-cloud, heterogenous IT environment during M&A integration. The final recommendation for highly efficient M&A IT integration is to enable developer access to the parent company’s cloud resources with enterprise guardrails in place.

This addresses the challenge of developer productivity during M&A – where the developers you acquire remain isolated from the parent organization, without access to shared infrastructure and the ability to collaborate efficiently with the broader team.

Ultimately, the goal is to help your newly acquired developers release software faster, removing the toil they face in the process. This in turn delivers faster time to market for products and services that address your customer needs and help grow the business.

Enable Developer Access to Cloud Resources with Enterprise Guardrails

You can enable faster developer access to cloud resources, more efficient collaboration, and shortened time to market with a developer platform that abstracts infrastructure tasks and provides a “golden path” to production. VMware Tanzu Application Platform gives you this layer of abstraction, functioning as a secure software supply chain for developers to build and ship modern applications running on Kubernetes in any cloud environment.

Within Tanzu Application Platform, your DevOps or platform operations teams define security, compliance and target infrastructure policies, allowing developers to focus on code and not worry about infrastructure-related tasks. Developers from the acquired company can onboard quickly, leveraging prebuilt templates that already contain your policies and work within the developer’s existing integrated development environment (IDE). They do not need to learn the new infrastructure that their code runs on because those tasks have been abstracted away.

With a centralized, multi-cloud developer platform like Tanzu Application Platform, you can accelerate the onboarding process and velocity of code to production as well as facilitate cross-team collaboration between entities that likely would have been siloed otherwise. Working from the same platform, teams from the acquired company can begin collaborating with their counterparts immediately, unlocking new value from the acquisition. These faster, more-secure paths to production allow teams to have shorter release cycles, less toil and ultimately deliver more business value.

Catch up on the 5 Phases of Highly Efficient M&A IT Integration by reading the full series:

1. Day 0 Employee Productivity 
2. Multi-Cloud Network Unification 
3. Multi-Cloud Infrastructure Consolidation 
4. Multi-Cloud Security and Governance
5. Developer Access with Enterprise Guardrails

Want the full story in one place? Read our whitepaper “The Executive Guide to Efficient M&A IT Integration” here!

Our goal is to give you the strategic guidance you need to achieve faster time to value in your M&A integration efforts. Through these phases of integration, you can deliver a more seamless process for your organization, while developing a durable framework for future M&A events that follow the same playbook.

The post 5 Phases of Highly Efficient M&A IT Integration: Developer Access with Enterprise Guardrails appeared first on Multi-Cloud Blog.

Early in 2023, the Cross-Cloud Services team started the Multi-Cloud Expedition – a Livestream series airing monthly on LinkedIn. In the Expedition, we’ve brought together industry and VMware subject matter experts to discuss and demo solutions to the most pressing multi-cloud challenges today. At VMware Explore 2023 Las Vegas we continued the discussion over 2 episodes from “The Hub” talking through the top 10 Multi-cloud challenges we hear from customers:

We have cultivated a list of key sessions (available now on-demand) that align and highlight how VMware is helping our customers and partners meet and resolve these challenges. Tune in to hear host Alexander Romero, Senior Director of Cross-Cloud Services at VMware, and David Linthicum, Chief Cloud Strategy Officer Deloitte Consulting, share their insights and the cultivated session list helping you maximize your learning and experience at VMware Explore. Watch both of these livestream episodes now on YouTube below!

If you are attending VMware Explore Las Vegas, please sit in on these sessions live. In addition, look for the Cross-Cloud Services team at the:

• Expo Floor Demo Booth – Meet solution specialists for one-on-one discussions and demos.  
• Specific CCS Breakouts – Starting your Clous Smart Journey; Cloud Smart Reference Architecture; M&A: Faster Time to Value.  (Full list available here.)
• Meet the Experts RoundTable (CCSM2693LV)
• Expo Floor Theater presentations on Solving the Multi-Cloud Problem​.
• The Cross-Cloud Café – Relax with a complimentary espresso and a VMware solution specialist enjoying a café conversation on various topics.

Follow these events on LinkedIn to receive notifications! Episode 8 and Episode 9. And stay tuned for more on VMware Explore 2023 Barcelona as we will be providing similar content and opportunities to talk with experts.

The Multi-Cloud Expedition Episodes 8 – Live from VMware Explore Las Vegas Recap

Chapter Segments:

0:08 – Live from VMware Explore Las Vegas 2023 with host Alexander Romero, Sr. Director Cross-Cloud Services & David Linthicum, Chief Cloud Strategy Officer Deloitte Consulting. Curated content at VMware Explore around top multi-cloud challenges.

1:11 – Level-set: What is the Multi-Cloud Expedition? Customer Journey from cloud first to cloud smart. (Visit the VMware Explore Library for session recordings.)

5:31 – Challenge: Participating in the changing AI/ML landscape. Sessions: Technology Innovation Showcase [K2906LV] & AI/ML and Cloud: Better Together [MAPB2888LVD]

9:57 – Challenge: Optimizing costs and resources by right-sizing workloads. Sessions: How to Build a FinOps Practice as You Transition to the Cloud [MAPB2137LV] & Maximizing Cloud Efficiency with VMware Aria [MAPB1517LV]

14:31 – Challenge: Ransomware attacks: Strategies for preventing and recovering. Sessions: Ransomware Recovery Customer and Partner Panel [CEIB2560LV] & Bulletproof Your Network: 4 Steps and Best Practices to Ransomware Defense [NSCB2730LV]

18:45 – Challenge: Simplifying Kubernetes and cluster management. Sessions: Accelerate App Delivery: Operate with VMware Tanzu [MAPB2778LV] & Accelerate App Delivery & Centralize Management on Public Cloud with Tanzu & Aria [MAPB2781LV]

22:55 – Challenge: Leveraging existing employee skill sets when extending to cloud. Sessions: Data Center Modernization – Day in the Life of a VMware Cloud Administrator [CEIB2652LV] & Deliver Hybrid Cloud to Modernize Infrastructure and Accelerate Innovation [CEIB2648LV]

25:22 – Wrap up: Review of challenges & VMware Explore Activities

Miss an episode? Check out our blog site for episode details and recording links: https://crosscloud.vmware.com/multi-cloud-expedition

The Multi-Cloud Expedition Episodes 9 – Live from VMware Explore Las Vegas Recap

Chapter Segments:

0:00 – Live from VMware Explore Las Vegas 2023 with host Alexander Romero, Sr. Director Cross-Cloud Services & David Linthicum, Chief Cloud Strategy Officer Deloitte Consulting. Curated content at VMware Explore around top multi-cloud challenges.

0:39 – Level-set: What is the Multi-Cloud Expedition? Customer Journey from cloud first to cloud smart. (Visit the VMware Explore Library for session recordings.)

2:36 – Challenge: Increasing developer velocity speeding application releases. Sessions: Accelerate App Delivery: Develop with VMware Tanzu [MAPB2777LV] & A Day in the Life of Developers – Kick-Start a Superior Developer Experience [MAPB2694LV]

4:32 – Challenge: Getting better visibility across clouds, without countless tools. Sessions: Accelerate App Delivery: Optimize with VMware Aria [MAPB2779LV] & Discover Your Clusters, Back Them Up, and Manage Costs with VMware Tanzu and VMware Aria [MAPB2868LV]

6:36 – Challenge: Consistent multi-cloud networking and security. Sessions: A Unique Approach to Automate and Scale Governance in Cloud Environments [MAPB2871LV] & Deploying at Cloud Speed: 7 Networking and Security Principles [NSCB2382LV]

8:35 – Challenge: Providing secure access for better customer and remote user experiences. Sessions: Discover the Journey VMware IT Took to Achieve Zero Trust [VMWB1402LV] & Digital Employee Experience Decoded: What Is It, and Why Should You Care [EUSB2722LV]

11:45 – Challenge: Rapidly deploying consistent infrastructure resources across clouds. Sessions: Discover How VMware IT Moved to Multi-Cloud and Achieved 99.99% Availability [VMWB2454LV] & Aha! Transition from VI Admin to Cloud Admin [MAPB2239LV]

14:37 – Wrap up: Review of challenges & VMware Explore Activities

Miss an episode? Check out our blog site for episode details and recording links: https://crosscloud.vmware.com/multi-cloud-expedition

1. February 22: Increasing Developer Velocity
2. March 21: Fundamentals of Cost, Observability and Security
3. April 19: Advanced Strategies for Governance and Security
4. May 10: Resilience Against Ransomware Attacks
5. May 31: Challenges of Mergers and Acquisitions
6. June 28: Modernization Your Datacenter for Multi-Cloud
7. July 26: Simplified Kubernetes Management

The Multi-Cloud Expedition Livestream Will Continue! 

10. September 27: VMware’s Take on AI Ready Infrastructure
11. October 25: Optimizing Multi-Cloud Workload Placement
12. November 8: Live from VMware Explore Barcelona 2023 – More about VMware Private AI!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

The post The Multi-Cloud Expedition Episodes 8 & 9 – Live from VMware Explore Las Vegas: Top 10 Multi-Cloud Challenges appeared first on Multi-Cloud Blog.

Author: David Linthicum
_{Globally Known Cloud Computing, AI, and Cybersecurity Thought Leader, Serial CTO, Best-Selling Author and Speaker, Radio/TV/Podcast Personality, Passionate Educator.}

{If you missed episode 6 of the The Multi-Cloud Expedition on “Modernizing Your Datacenter for Multi-Cloud”, please visit that blog page for details and links to the recordings.}

Let’s dig deeper into specific strategies for a multicloud deployment that will optimize its use for on-premises and cloud-based systems. The goal is to leverage a multicloud deployment using approaches and technologies that minimize risk and cost plus maximize return of value to the business.  This means doing multicloud work and playing well with all systems in the cloud and data centers. Everyone will eventually move to a multicloud deployment, and most have no idea how to do this using existing systems in optimized ways.

Also, fundamental is building a modern data center that can accommodate what multicloud will be and how to provide core integration services for more traditional applications and data storage to applications that exist within your multicloud deployment. While the trends seem to be away from a data center focus, the reality is the data center is still foundational to enterprise IT, and, for it to have continued value, it must be modernized. This reduces the cost of the business at the end of the day.  Let’s explore how this works. 

Keep in mind we’re dealing with a few new concepts:

• In multicloud, complexity is driving many new moving parts, and they need to be operated, secured, and maintained. 
• Integration must occur between core systems within the data center and core systems in the multicloud deployment.  
• We must focus on finding standard services that can run across more traditional systems and those that exist within “the cloud.”

Remember that most enterprises won’t increase their operations budget to support multicloud. The key themes are to not replicate operational services for each cloud provider, which is the way teams typically approach multicloud today. That architecture won’t scale, and you will just make the complexity worse.

Eventually, you’ll run into complexity issues, such as security misconfigurations that lead to breaches or outages due to systems that aren’t proactively monitored. If these issues go unresolved, chances are good that your multicloud deployment will be considered a failure in the eyes of the business or more trouble than the cost to deploy it.

So, do not replicate operational processes such as security, data integration, governance, and other systems within each cloud. This replication creates excess complexity. Here are some additional basic tenets to follow in terms of making multicloud and data center work better together:

• Consolidate operationally oriented services to work across clouds and data center-based systems, not within a single cloud or system. This usually includes operations, security, and governance that you want to span all clouds in your multicloud deployment. Because it can consist of anything a multicloud leverages, it works across all clouds and data center-based systems within a multicloud deployment.
• Leverage technologies and architectures that support abstraction and automation. This removes most of the complexity by abstracting native cloud resources and services to view and manage those services via common mechanisms. For instance, there should be one way to view cloud and on-premises storage that could map down to 20–25 native cloud storage models. Because humans do not need to deal with differences in native cross-cloud and cross-systems operations (security, governance, and so on), abstraction and automation avoid excess complexity.
• Isolate volatility to accommodate growth and changes, such as adding and removing public cloud providers or adding and removing specific services within the cloud and on-premises. Place volatility into a configurable domain where major or minor clouds and cloud services can be added or removed to meet the business’ exact needs.

Move as much as possible above the clouds and data center systems to work across those clouds and data center-based systems. Typical services such as security, operations, and governance should repeat across public clouds or any service that can normalize complexity. This approach removes services that can operate only on a single cloud or single data center deployment and instead deploys services that work across cloud providers and internal systems.

The post Guest Blog: Data Center Modernization with Multicloud in Mind appeared first on Multi-Cloud Blog.

At Supercloud 3, the online event hosted by the CUBE, executives from industry-leading cloud and cybersecurity organizations came together to discuss the confluence of three mega-trends: Generative AI, multi-cloud, and cybersecurity. VMware CTO Kit Colbert spoke to the CUBE host John Furrier on these topics, sharing what he hears from enterprise organizations and the approach VMware is taking to help our customers successfully navigate this paradigm-shifting change.

Watch Kit’s session, Gen AI: An inflection point for securing supercloud infrastructure, available on-demand here.

Kit reinforced the notion that we are at an inflection point as an industry, where new startups will form, and existing companies will adapt to deliver the value of Generative AI. While IT leaders are excited about the potential of GenAI, they are concerned in parallel about security, data privacy, and the integrity of their intellectual property.

A thoughtful approach to embracing GenAI is Kit’s recommendation, and what VMware is helping enable. Specifically, enabling choice in where you can run GenAI applications, whether that’s in a hyperscale cloud or on-premises, both at a sustainable cost.

“I do see thoughtfulness going into these discussions – what sort of architecture should I be taking, what dependencies should I be taking, and how do I ensure that I still get the choice of location – that is super important”

Kit Colbert, VMware CTO

For many, this choice may come down to the specific stage of AI app development. Enterprise organizations tend to have large data stores on-premises, and may want to train large language models close to that data, as a cost-saving and privacy-protecting measure. Then, when it comes to inference, choose the best environment to reach the end customers of each application.

Ultimately IT leaders need to determine how they can protect their organizations appropriately while allowing developers to move as fast as possible with these technologies. IT operators play a critical role in achieving this speed and agility and are at an inflection point of their own. How do they gain the skills they need to run infrastructure tuned for AI model training and inference, expanding the roles they have today?

Those that have worked with VMware through the years know we take career paths for our customers seriously, from establishing the massive ecosystem of virtualization experts, to running Kubernetes on VMware infrastructure (or anywhere else), and now running GenAI applications.

Be sure to tune into both the General Session and the Technology Innovation Showcase at VMware Explore on August 22, to hear much more from Kit and the VMware team.

The Past, Present and Future of Supercloud

Also at Supercloud 3, VP of Cross-Cloud services Vittorio Viarengo sat down with theCUBE hosts to reflect back on the Supercloud market and its origins just a few years back.

Jump into Vittorio’s session, The Past, Present and Future of Supercloud, available on-demand.

In this talk, the three discuss the origins of the Supercloud concept, which Vittorio calls “IT history repeating itself”. He recounts several moments in IT history where the amount of choice grew to the point where complexity slowed innovation, and a new abstraction came in to simplify and unleash the next wave of growth.

Now, as Vittorio explains, startups building new products are Supercloud by default – meaning from the start, they support multiple clouds. Naturally, these companies address a broader market and reduce friction for their customers working in isolated ways today.

For VMware customers, our goal is the same – deliver Cross-Cloud services that unleash the power of every cloud at a sustainable cost.

Learn more about this strategy here.

The post <strong>The Confluence of GenAI, Multi-Cloud, and Security at Supercloud 3</strong> appeared first on Multi-Cloud Blog.