Following quickly on the heels of their announcements this past August in VMworld 2014 in San Francisco, this past Oct 14th at VMworld 2014 Europe in Barcelona Spain, VMware made a number of new announcements designed to enable them to better compete for mindshare and market leadership in the quickly growing cloud marketplace. In the keynote Pat Gelsinger VMware CEO stated that their mission is to deliver the market leading cloud management platform both on-premise and as-a-service. VMware made several announcements regarding their VMware vRealize Suite 6.0 as well as their End-User Computing products. Some of the highlights of VMware’s announcements at VMworld 2014 Europe include:
Cloud Management
VMware’s cloud management suite has been rebranded as vRealize Suite 6.0 and at VMworld 2014 Europe VMware announced significant updates to the several members of the new vRealize Suite including:
- VMware vRealize Operations 6.0 -- A major update of the product formerly known as VMware vCenter Operations Management. The new vRealize Operation 6.0 has a re-platformed architecture that can deliver up to 8x greater scalability with unified management across vSphere and other domains. It also features operational analytics, smart alerts and problem detection capabilities that help identify complex issues and then recommend remediation or run automated tasks.
- VMware vRealize Code Stream – This is an all new member of the vRealize Suite that is designed to enable DevOps teams to deliver frequent and reliable software releases. vRealize Code Stream is a continuous delivery solution that helps IT better support agile development. It will provide a single dashboard to provide end-to-end visibility of the entire release process across Dev and Ops teams.
- VMware vRealize Automation 6.2 -- Formerly VMware vCloud Automation Center, the new vRealize Automation provides infrastructure and application services delivery with a self-service portal and policy-based governance. The latest release offers greater integration with vRealize Operations and VMware NSX.
- VMware vRealize Business Standard 6.0 and Advanced/Enterprise 8.2 -- Formerly the VMware IT Business Management Suite, vRealize Business provides control over the costs and quality of IT services that that helps CIOs align IT with business needs. The new release proves improved decision-making capabilities including pricing analysis, showback/chargeback and budgeting for infrastructure services out-of-the-box.
- VMware vRealize Log Insight 2.5 -- Formerly VMware vCenter Log Insight, vRealize Log Insight provides real-time log management across physical, virtual and cloud environments. The new release offers better integration with vRealize Operations and analyzes both structured and unstructured data for end-to-end operations management. There are more than 20 Log Insight content packs are available on VMware Solution Exchange, supporting leading IT providers such as Cisco and Microsoft.
- VMware vRealize Air Compliance – Currently in beta vRealize Air Compliance is a SaaS offering that measures and reports on configuration compliance of vSphere environments. This event-driven change detection solution delivers a simple at-a-glance overview of your organization’s configuration compliance against a variety of security and regulatory requirements.
End User Computing
In addition to the cloud management announcements VMware also announced several new End-User Computing enhancements consisting of:
- VMware Horizon Flex – Combining central control with local desktop virtualization based on either Fusion Pro on the Mac or Player Pro on the PC, Horizon Flex enables the IT administrator to perform many central desktop manage tasks including: preconfigure applications for the end user; Enroll the desktop in the corporate domain; Enable access to a VPN; Lock down the desktop. Once the user has downloaded the desktop, he can run those applications seamlessly and locally without access to the network.
- VMware App Volumes – This solution provides just-in time application delivery at scale to VMware and third party virtualized desktops. It uses on-demand layering technology that works with VMware Horizon 6 with View and Citrix XenApp 6.5.
- VMware Horizon Desktop DR – This is a new service that will enable organizations to ensure workforce continuity with affordable cloud-hosted desktops and applications. In the event of a disaster, IT will be able to get users up and running quickly from the cloud without the complexity and cost of physical desktop disaster recovery solutions.
- VMware Horizon Air – Formerly VMware Horizon DaaS, Horizon Air is a hosted cloud services that virtual desktops that gives customers the ability to blend public and private cloud desktops for a seamless end-user experience.
Quick Guide to Name Changes
If some of these changes seem confusing that no doubt because VMware has been furiously renaming many of their products. To help you keep some of the latest name changes here’s a quick guide to the latest bunch of VMware product names both new and old.
- vRealize Operations -- Formerly vCenter Operations Management Suite
- vRealize Automation – Formerly vCloud Automation Center
- vRealize Business – Formerly IT Business Management
- vRealize Log Insight -- Formerly vCenter Log Insight
- Horizon Air – Formerly Horizon DaaS
- vCloud Air -- Formerly vCloud Hybrid Service
The key naming takeaways are that VMware’s cloud management suite now fall under the vRealize brand and that essentially all new cloud-based products are under the Air brand. For example, vCloud Hybrid Service is now vCloud Air.
