VMWare counts on SDDC solutions in 2014

Diversifying from its core server virtualisation business, VMware India is betting big on its software-defined data centre solutions, planned to be launched in the first half of this year.

The move is an attempt to achieve three point imperatives set in VMWorld conference for 2014. 

BS Nagarajan, director, systems engineering, VMware India and Saarc, explains the three points, the extension of virtualisation to the entire IT, achieving automation to scale up the cloud and propagating hybrid cloud.

In its aim at achieving the three mentioned points, Nagarajan said, "VMWare is focussing on solutions around software-defined data centres. Under this segment, the company's focus is on its four components."

The first is software defined computer and the company has brought lot of enhancements to its hypervisor, which makes the applications run easily on it. Nagarajan says, "Latency sensitive applications like call centre application and others can easily run on the hypervisor now. Literally this will make the applications love the hypervisor."

The second component-storage-is one of the most expensive components bought externally. VMware is aiming at reducing this cost through Virtual Storage Area Network (VSAN) technology.

Nagarajan says that the company has already made a beta version public for further deliberations on this product. He mentions that the same will be available in India in the 2014 H1. He adds, "It means that very soon customers need not buy the expensive external shared storage, they can go on buying servers with hard drives and achieve the same benefits through VSAN."

"The penultimate component in the software-define data centre and the most important one is software-defined networking(SDN) solution," said Nagarajan adding that the networking, today, is the most hated topic as it entails a very complex process.

"The complexity is to the extent that we cannot migrate a workload from a Cisco-based network to Juniper-based network," he points. To cater to this segment, the company has launched a solution called NSX. Here on SDN, Nagarajan adds, there is no dependency on the underlying hardware or machine. VMWare has already launched it in India and is going aggressive on this segment though Nagarajan states that the company has no reference customers in India.

Automation through its management software and propagate the idea of self servicing is fourth and final component, informed Nagarajan.
VMWare India, this year, is also re-focussing on desktop virtualisation business, which has not been of substantial value to the company.