VMware aims to simplify cross-cloud challenges

Customers face enormous challenges when moving to the cloud; According to Guido Appenzeller, Head of Technology Strategy, Network / Business Security Unit, at VMware, AWS, Azure, Google and IBM Public Clouds, as well as a data center in the field. The question is how to connect them all together?

Appenzeller stated that VMware's Cross-Cloud services, currently under development, are intended to provide consistent deployment models, security policies, visibility and governance for all applications, whether they are executed on-site or off and independent of the underlying cloud or hypervisor.

Appenzeller, VMware's Cloud Services Services leader, recently joined John Furrier (@furrier), co-host of theCUBE (* disclosure below) of the SiliconANGLE Media team. VMware is a leading provider of VMware, VMware, and VMware.

Why customers want multiple clouds

"I think what we are seeing is that customers use different clouds for their specificities, or the best properties of the breed," Appenzeller said. For example, AWS has by far the largest catalog; Google has cheap storage; And Microsoft is very aggressive about licensing its own products over Azure, "he explained. A client can choose one of them - or all - to get their individual benefits.

In the cloud, the network is the hardest problem, including the configuration of a firewall, said Appenzeller. This is where VMware has found an opportunity because its NSX network virtualization platform already allows a user to extend a network through heterogeneous hardware in the data center. It can take a Cisco or Arista switch and create a virtual network, so why can not it do the same in the cloud, Appenzeller asked?

Appenzeller explained that NSX really shines by not moving around workloads, but rather by giving IT teams powerful tools so they can handle these workloads across the clouds in the same way.

The future of managing inter-cloud architectures

Over the next five years, Appenzeller predicted that the majority of workloads will still be on-site, but will increase the shift to the cloud. When companies move in the cloud, they have to decide how to scale it in the future, "he explained. Thus, companies will begin to understand the complexity of managing the cloud or clouds.

"This entire transition from VMware to the provision of SaaS services for the public cloud; this, for me, is the future, and I am very excited about it," said Appenzeller.

Watch the full video interview with VMware 2016 by SiliconANGLE and the CUBE. (* Disclosure: VMware Inc. and other companies are sponsoring certain segments of VMware 2016 on theCUBE of SiliconANGLE Media