Enterprises have embraced hybrid cloud to deliver agility and drive their digital transformation. This requires enterprises to be able to run workloads and applications across more than one environment, and often multiple clouds. Yet at the same time, many organizations are struggling with the complexity to make all their environments work together. It’s critical for all enterprises, especially those in highly regulated industries charged with safeguarding the most sensitive data, to enable their infrastructure to work holistically, and avoid creating blind spots that can open the door to risk. As ransomware attacks continue to grow, security and compliance requirements evolve, and customer expectations for convenient and frictionless experiences are at an all-time high, it’s clear there’s a lot on the line. To successfully drive meaningful digital transformation, it takes the right technology, skills and support to thrive in today’s hybrid cloud world.

To meet this need, VMware and IBM are building on our more than 20-year partnership with new and expanded solutions aiming to support our joint clients’ needs and goals in deploying and managing VMware workloads. Supported through close alignment with our go-to-market, sales, and support motions, these targeted solutions, and accompanying flexible consumption models, aim to make it easier for partners and joint clients of IBM and VMware to deliver differentiated services, reduce overall IT costs, and optimize investments in cloud.

At VMware Explore 2023, IBM and VMware are announcing the following:

Accelerating Modernization with the Combined Power of IBM and VMware Hybrid Cloud

IBM and VMware aim to support mutual clients on their digital transformations no matter where they are in their journey. To this end, IBM will be the first public cloud provider to launch a new partner-managed service based on VMware Cloud editions as part of the VMware Cross-Cloud managed service initiative. The forthcoming VMware Cross-Cloud managed service will provide customers with a hybrid cloud aligned to a NIST-validated framework that allows for seamless migration of workloads between on premises and IBM Cloud environments. VMware Cross-Cloud managed services can enable customers to lower total cost of ownership (TCO), build and modernize applications quickly, and simplify operations while addressing security and industry-compliance requirements.

Also supporting hybrid cloud acceleration, IBM and VMware are building on the IBM Cloud for VMware as a Service with a cloud managed multi-tenant vCloud Director solution to introduce new consumption options that enable greater flexibility and scalability with a low cost of entry. This model allows clients to leverage applications in a shared environment while maintaining the ability to tailor application instances based on unique business needs. Residing in the IBM Cloud management plane, clients also benefit from built-in maintenance, upgrades, monitoring, and security controls from IBM technologists who bring VMware-specific expertise.

Prioritizing Security Maturity in Complex Hybrid Cloud Environments

Businesses are divided in how they plan to handle the increasing cost and frequency of data breaches – according to IBM’s latest Cost of a Data Breach Report – with studied breached organizations more likely to pass incident costs onto consumers (57%) than to increase security investments (51%).

Last year, we introduced IBM Cloud Cyber Recovery to help protect valuable data from modern threats through backup, disaster recovery and cyber recovery. Now, clients can work with IBM Consulting to help protect their data with IBM Cloud Cyber Recovery (ICCR) Service as a managed service to help minimize the business impact of cyberattacks with fast and scalable recovery capabilities across cloud environments. Combining the value of the IBM Cloud with the VMware virtualization model, along with this new managed service offering, clients can streamline their security workloads while maintaining their compliance controls and data resiliency needed for their overall business.

Leveraging the Transformative Power of Ecosystem Partnerships

Today, the ecosystem approach provides clients with critical access to new technologies, the latest research, and competencies that an enterprise wouldn’t have access to on their own. Most importantly, collaborating with the right partners helps our clients accelerate their journey to modernization. At VMware Explore this year, we are showcasing how we are working with our ecosystem partners in service to our clients with the following announcements:

• Dizzion is releasing its new Digital Workspaces for Financial Services, available on IBM Cloud for Financial Services. With built-in security and compliance capabilities, IBM is helping Dizzion address the challenges of securing hybrid workforces and mission-critical workloads, while prioritizing resiliency and performance and helping more efficiently demonstrate regulatory compliance.
• HCLTech, an IBM ecosystem partner and leading GSI, is launching its Shared Data Center as a Service (Shared DCaaS) offering built on IBM Cloud for VMWare solutions which aims to help enterprises accelerate their hybrid cloud transformation journeys. This service offering includes shared data centers, dedicated data centers, and regulated workloads in a catalog-based model, all built on the IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions.
• PrimaryIO is announcing the availability of its Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) platform on IBM Cloud. Called ProtectIO, the platform – exclusive to IBM Cloud and consumable via the IBM Cloud Catalog – aims to support clients in modernizing their disaster recovery by providing an attractive total cost of ownership (TCO) and recovery point objective (RPO) by leveraging low-cost cloud object storage and continuous data protection.

To learn more about how IBM and VMware are helping clients to modernize within hybrid environments, please visit: https://www.ibm.com/cloud/vmware.