VMworld 2018: Five Things VMware Needs to Do to Support an Enterprise DevOps Model

Charlotte Dunlap – Principal Analyst, Application Platforms

Summary Bullets:

• Having laid out its private cloud management and strategy, VMware needs to set its sights on easing microservices and multi-cloud deployment complexities next.

• Articulating its DevOps roadmap, including microservices, service mesh, and serverless computing, would go a long way instilling confidence among customers.

A year after rolling out new cloud services including visibility, cost monitoring, analytics, and security, VMware released during VMworld SaaS-based automation tools, but this is only the tip of the iceberg in helping address customers’ app modernization plans.

Enterprises are now seeking private/hybrid cloud solutions addressing APLM (application and platforms lifecycle management) issues around new development architectures such as microservices and eventually serverless computing. VMware is well positioned through its vSphere enterprise and SP customer base to provide services to enterprises moving to provision containers with security, storage, and networking. While VMware is focused on providing private and hybrid cloud management around early containerization projects involving monolithic applications, it must now turn its attention towards supporting IT operations teams through important product integrations of key technologies such as Istio service mesh and Knative.

During this week’s VMworld, within VMware’s Cloud Services division there was little context in the way of DevOps strategy, including updates on its containerization strategy which centers around Pivotal Container Service (PKS), VMware Kubernetes Engine (VKE), VMware Integrated Container (VIC), and Photon (microservices) portfolio. VMware needs to ratchet up efforts in coming months to move further up the cloud stack and address enterprise IT operations teams’ APLM issues. This blog post provides five crucial moves VMware needs to make to remain competitive with rival application platforms and hybrid cloud rivals.