Virtualisation tech major VMware is all set its comprehensive roadmap for the Middle East market. The strategy will hinge on expanding its suite of products and technologies from the data centre to the desk top around its flagship Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS) and its new vClient initiative to expand Virtual Desktops to universal clients.
The Virtual Datacenter OS is built to allow businesses in the Middle East to efficiently pool all types of hardware resources – servers, storage and network – into an on-premise cloud – and, when needed, safely transfer workloads to external clouds for additional compute capacity.
“For the first time at VMware, we are offering an alternative to the traditional OS, which is optimised for a single server and supports only those applications written to its interfaces,” explained Reza Malekzadeh, Sr. Dir. of Product and Marketing, VMware. “The VDC-OS serves as the OS for the entire datacenter and supports any application written to any server in the OS, from legacy Windows applications to modern distributed applications that run in mixed operating system environments. This means that Middle Eastern customers can achieve maximum application availability, testable disaster recovery solutions, and better quality of service without any application changes or deploying additional specialised software.”
Datacenters running on the Virtual Datacenter OS are claimed to be highly elastic, self-managing and self-healing, which means that regional businesses can benefit from the flexibility and the efficiency of the “lights-out” datacenter.
The VDC-OS provide regional enterprises with the ability to expand their virtual infrastructures along three dimensions. First, it delivers a set of infrastructure services (called Infrastructure vServices) to seamlessly aggregate servers, storage and network as a pool of on-premise cloud resources and allocates them to applications that need them the most.
Second, it delivers a set of application services (called Application vServices) to guarantee the right levels of availability, security and scalability to all applications independent of the operating system, development frameworks or architecture on which they were built to run. Third, the VDC-OS delivers a set of cloud services (called Cloud vServices) that federate compute capacity between the on-premise and off-premise clouds.
“The VDC-OS is just another way that VMware is providing technology to regional enterprises thanks to the inclusion of Fault Tolerance and Data Recovery. This means revolutionary protection from most causes for failure,” added Malekzadeh.
VMware is also pushing the arrival of its vClient Initiative to the Middle East aimed at delivering universal clients – desktops that follow regional users to any end point while providing a rich personalised experienced that is secure, cost effective and easy for IT to manage. The first step of the initiative is the roll out of VMware View – a set of products that extend VMware’s Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solutions to include both servers hosted virtual desktops and client virtual desktops that can run on any laptop or desktop computer.
“Users in the region want a desktop that follows them wherever they go”, said Malekzadeh, “IT departments on hand want to manage those environments securely, cost effectively, and more easily than they do today. VMware is addressing both ends of the spectrum with our vClient Initiative and our new VMware View product portfolio will satisfy both stakeholders’ priorities. Users will be able to view their desktop running remotely in the datacenter or running locally on any device. At the same time, IT administrators will be able to manage, update, and secure all of these desktops centrally with greater flexibility and scalability than what is possible today.”
VMware View is a portfolio of products that will give end users a single view of all their applications and data in a familiar, personalised environment – “myview” – that is available from any device and any location.
“The desktop of the future will not be a single device like a laptop or a thin client – It will provide consumers with all of the capability and personalisation of their desktop experience accessible from any location,” added Malekzadeh.
Collaborating for benefit
VMware is working with a number of its partners and customers to showcase benefits of its technology. “The experience with first joint customers of VMware and Fujitsu Siemens Computer shows that IT organizations can dramatically increase the quality of service to their PC users,” said Dr. Joseph Reger, chief technology officer, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. “Under the umbrella of ‘Dynamic IT for Workplaces,’ Fujitsu Siemens Computers has created pre-integrated solution stacks based on VDI and complementary technologies and services for consulting, design, implementation and operation, as well as services to calculate the return on investment. This is in order to help customers benefit earlier from VMware technologies, to decrease time and risk for first projects and to help overcome lack of skills.”
Customers are increasingly using virtualisation to deliver lower costs and reduced risks to the business, as virtualization moves from being a tactical technology towards becoming a key transformation strategy,” said Roberto Moctezuma, VP Desktop Solutions Organization, HP.
