Service providers key link between enterprises and multi-cloud opportunity: 451 Research
Cloud infrastructure vendor VMWare on Aug. 23 reported a 13% year-over-year increase in Q2 revenues to $2.17 billion, which CEO Pat Gelsinger chalked up to the expanding adoption of cloud-based solutions as enterprises, service providers and other customers look to build what he described as a “essential, ubiquitous digital foundation enabling their business transformation.”
Company highlights include expanding VWware Cloud on Amazon Web Services to Germany, and work on a hybrid cloud service meant to “enable United States public sector agencies to deploy and run applications on…software-defined data centers on AWS GovCloud (US).” On the service provider front, VMware launched its vCloud NFV-OpenStack Edition 3.0 to help service providers move workloads in a “telco-distributed cloud.”
The reach of multi-cloud service delivery for both public, private and service provider interests speaks to the foundational role fo cloud in ongoing virtualization of critical business processes.
As 451 Research’s Carl Brooks, analyst, Service Providers, Managed Services and Hosting put it: “Service provider partners are emerging as the most important link between enterprises and their desired cloud infrastructure vendors. They provide the expertise, work and experience necessary to move at the pace today’s market demands. For vendors, enabling partners make more money [incentivizes] them to sell more more software; it’s becoming a vital route to market for cloud platforms to as broad a base as possible.”
Among VMware’s continued work in this arena, the company updated its VMware Cloud Provider to support a transition to a multi-cloud environment. Users can access what VMware describes as a “centralized portal for partners to purchase, provision and manage” mutli-cloud services.
Rajeev Bhardwaj, vice president of product management, cloud provider software business unit, said the goal is to “enable our partners to capture the opportunity for multi-cloud and create new managed services inclusive of non-VMware-based clouds…Partners will be able to address the complexity of multi-cloud management and extend their relationship with their enterprise customers.”
