Edge portfolio includes compute, security, telco cloud components
VMware on Wednesday announced its new Edge portfolio, which it says will help businesses run, manage and better secure apps in near and far edge locations and multi-cloud environments.
“A new type of workload is emerging—edge-native apps—that must run at the edge to perform as intended. AR/VR, connected vehicles and immersive gaming are becoming mainstream. 5G has made the use of collaborative robots, drone fleets and digital twins a reality,” said Sanjay Uppal, senior vice president and general manager, Service Provider and Edge, VMware, in a press release. “VMware delivers a trusted foundation — a multi-cloud edge—to help organizations move forward in the new edge reality.”
The product line comprises VMware Edge Compute Stack, and integrated virtual machine and container-based stack in different configurations for Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise customers. VMWare SASE is a cloud security service that incorporates Software Defined Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN) and a global network of Points of Presences (PoPs).
The third component is VMWare Telco Cloud, VMware’s RAN disaggregation play. VMware sees an opportunity as operators are moving from virtualization to cloud-native 5G. The Kubernetes-based solution helps CSPs build, manage and run containerized workloads across private, telco, edge and public clouds. VMware is working with Intel to use the latter’s FlexRAN software reference architecture alongside its own RAN Intelligent Controller to reduce integration risk for operators. VMWare partnered with Telecom Italia this year to create and expand an Open RAN network in the Italian cities of Faenza, Matera and Turin.
VMWare touted that its “broad partner ecosystem spans public cloud providers, service providers, edge-native app developers, network services providers, system integrators, network equipment providers, near-edge hardware manufacturers and far edge hardware manufacturers.” The company cited businesses including Lenovo and Dell, which spun VMWare off earlier this year, with plans to co-engineer solutions into the future.
