VMware Explore Barcelona 2023: Enhanced Private AI and Sovereign Cloud Services Announced

VMware’s Private AI platform will include interoperability with Intel, IBM’s watsonx and Kyndryl.

Cloud computing company VMware rolled out new cloud, AI, edge and data services at VMware Explore Barcelona 2023 on November 7. The new private AI and sovereign cloud services reflect the increased adoption of AI products.

The VMware site has details about the international availability of the company’s platforms and services

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Private AI platform partners with Intel, IBM and Kyndryl

Organizations have begun to consider the possibilities of private AI, which brings generative AI capabilities to the enterprise without exposing confidential or copyrighted information to the outside world.

SEE: Databricks acquired MosaicML in June to add its “factory” for private AI models. (TechRepublic)

“We truly believe private AI will become the default architecture for enabling generative AI in the enterprise,” said Chris Wolf, vice president of VMware AI Labs, in a pre-briefing for the media on November 2.

To address this, VMware is releasing its own Private AI platform with three choices of partners: Intel, IBM’s watsonx or Kyndryl. Customers are often concerned about CPU and GPU capacity, and VMware brings the ability to intelligently scale access compute when customers need them in order to avoid cost overruns, Wolf said.

VMware Private AI with Intel processors and hardware accelerators can be combined with the VMware Cloud Foundation (Figure A).

Figure A

VMware Private AI brings IBM watsonx to on-premises environments using full-stack architecture built on the VMware Cloud Foundation and Red Hat OpenShift.

Kyndryl offers new services for VMware Private AI, specifically a framework, software tools and out-of-the-box integrations for building machine learning or generative AI applications.

Enhanced ransomware recovery

VMware Live Recovery, which will be available in Q4 FY24, is an upcoming service that provides unified management of ransomware and disaster recovery across on-premises and public clouds.

VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 announced

Release 5.1 of the VMware Cloud Foundation infrastructure service will add expanded storage and new sovereign cloud services. It adds 2X GPU capacity, 4x storage performance boost with 16 virtual GPUs per virtual machine, and policy enforcement and self-service virtual private servers, Prashanth Shenoy, vice president of marketing at VMware’s cloud infrastructure business group, revealed at the pre-briefing. Updates to the VMware Cloud Foundation are expected to be released in the fourth quarter of 2024.

VMware Cloud Data Services Manager will be expanded to Google’s AlloyDB Omni, which is appropriate for AI/ML workloads and analytics, and MiniO Object Store. Both are in Tech Preview now.

VMware is also adding ReadyNodes from OEMs to VMware vSAN Max Momentum.

Adding data services to sovereign clouds

Another development in VMware cloud relates to growing calls for data sovereignty in highly-regulated industries in the European Union. VMware is expanding managed data services for communications service providers, bringing data services to VMware’s existing network of sovereign clouds (Figure B). MongoDB, Kafka, Greenplum and NetApp StorageGRID are coming to the VMware Cloud Foundation in a self-service managed format for sovereign clouds to add agility and develop applications faster.

Figure B

Tanzu Mission Control will now be available for container management as an air-gapped variant for sovereign services. VMware will let customers bring their own encryption keys to sovereign security services. VMware is working with new partners in this area as well: NetApp, which brings StorageGRID Object Storage, and Thales, which brings the CipherTrust data security solution and bring-your-own-key features. More than 50 cloud service providers, mostly in Europe and Asia, are now part of the VMware Cloud Verified program.

SEE: Large organizations add sovereignty controls to comply with regulations such as GDPR. (TechRepublic)

Updates to Tanzu application delivery

Tanzu, VMware’s application delivery service, is getting new services, including a new AI tab in Tanzu Application Platform and Tanzu Application Service. A multicloud data control plane within Tanzu Tech Hub is now available in Tech Preview for VMware Tanzu Data Services. The following improvements are coming to VMware Tanzu Intelligence Services:

• GreenOps (beta) and deep K8s costing in CloudHealth.
• Expanded governance visibility in Guardrails.
• ML-based insights and Hub integration.
• Intelligent Assist, a conversational AI for queries and search, in Hub.
• Multicloud app transformation in Transformer.
• App Catalog security enhancements.

Updates to Tanzu Data Services as of November 7 include a simplified bundle of all of VMware’s data offerings, plus a new VMware Tanzu Data Hub (currently in tech preview) for fleet management and ecosystem data services.

Additional updates apply to Spring, the open source Java development framework developed by VMware. Spring 6.1 includes a free Spring Health Assessment, Spring consulting and Spring Boot 3.2. This update was released on November 7.

“As we mark the 20th anniversary of Spring this year, our latest enhancements to the framework and its deep integration to the Tanzu Platform give application teams the ability to leverage more cutting-edge technology like AI in new apps and take those apps to production quickly, safely, and more securely,” said Purnima Padmanabhan, senior vice president and general manager of the modern apps and management business group, VMware, in a press release.

Changes to edge products

Four announcements reveal changes in VMware edge products.

• VMware Edge Cloud Orchestrator will help coordinate better visibility for edge workloads.
• Intelligent Assist for the VMware Software-Defined Edge will simplify operational experiences for SASE customers and now includes Microsoft Security Copilot. A release date has not yet been announced.
• A new Workflow Hub for VMware Telco Cloud Automation will support the proliferation of OpenRAN cell sites. It will be available Nov. 7.
• Unifying the VMware Software-Defined Edge Ecosystem and adding integration with Symantec for security. This is expected to occur in Q4 2023.

For IT teams managing employees who use macOS, VMware introduced new Mac management capabilities in VMware End User Computing. For example, Hub Health in Workspace ONE Intelligent Hub and Workspace ONE UEM will automatically identify macOS device health trends.