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Despite acquisition anxiety, the show must go on for multi-cloud heavyweight VMware at VMware Explore 2023 conference in Barcelona, Spain, this week
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VMware is incorporating AI into its private cloud business through collaborations with Intel and IBM
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The partnership will address one big customer concern which is the availability of GPU capacity
All eyes are on VMware and Broadcom as the industry awaits word on whether Broadcom will succeed with its planned $61 billion acquisition of VMware.
On a conference call with several VMware executives in advance of the company’s VMware Explore 2023 Barcelona conference, VMware referred all questions about the deal to Broadcom and would only say that they expect the deal to close soon.
Nevertheless, the show must go on for multi-cloud heavyweight VMware, which is currently holding its VMware Explore 2023 conference in Barcelona, Spain, this week.
One key element coming out of Barcelona is how VMware is incorporating AI into its private cloud business through collaborations with Intel and IBM.
According to Chris Wolf, VP at VMware AI Labs, the challenge VMware is trying to solve is to help companies balance the business gains from artifical intelligence (AI) with the need for privacy and compliance. Wolf said that to achieve this, the performance of the private AI has to as good as or better than public AI and the cost has to be lower. “We’ve been able to realize lower cost for AI services running internally,” he said.
With this in mind, the company announced it’s working with Intel to develop an AI stack that will let customers use their existing VMware and Intel infrastructure to build and deploy AI models. Specifically, the two companies will combine VMware Cloud Foundation and Intel’s AI software suite along with Intel’s Xeon processes and Max Series GPUs to create this AI stack.
Wolf added that this partnership will address one big customer concern which is the availability of GPU capacity. He said that VMware’s cloud suite will let customers schedule available GPU resources for when they are needed, which will prevent cost overruns.
But Intel isn’t VMware’s only AI collaboration. The company also is working with IBM and Red Hat OpenShift to provide enterprises with access to the IBM watsonX AI platform across public clouds, virtual private clouds in data centers and also at the edge.
Wolf said that VMware has heard from a number of customers that want AI services on watsonX available on-premises so this new collaboration addresses that request. He added that because VMware is extending IBM watsonX across public clouds, virtual private clouds, data centers and edge sites, the AI models can be trained and tuned. “I truly believe that private AI will be the default for generative AI in the enterprise,” Wolf added.
This collaboration between IBM and VMware is part of the IBM and VMware Joint Innovation Lab, which was developed in 2018 and brings together a dedicated team of engineers to work on hybrid cloud and AI-focused projects.
Building on cloud foundation
VMware also announced that it is adding some new capabilities to VMware Cloud Foundation, including the next-generation of VMware Data Services Manager that is intended to accelerate the development of applications for the cloud including AI/ML applications.
The company said that Data Services Manager will let IT administrators have full control over data policies and offer data services on-premises making it possible for developers to innovate rapidly.
According to Prashanth Shenoy, VP of marketing for cloud at VMware, the Data Services Manager was an important addition to the portfolio because it gives customers with a unified way to provision infrastructure and provide data services.
Sovereign cloud steals the limelight
Sovereign cloud is becoming a hot-button issue thanks to the changing geopolitical landscape and new regulations to control data. A sovereign cloud ensures that all data including metadata stays on sovereign soil and prevents foreign access to data.
Recent developments in AI are creating more demand for sovereign cloud, particularly as new local laws are requesting that AI data stay in a certain region.
Rajeev Bhardwaj, VP of cloud provider solutions at VMware, said that there is currently no standard for sovereign clouds so VMware is working with several cloud service providers to develop a framework that allows sovereignty but also lets customers innovate as well.
The company’s VMware Sovereign Cloud now has 50 cloud providers in 33 countries that support its sovereign cloud requirements. In addition, the company said that its working with its partners to help customers comply with the rapidly changing data privacy laws by creating best practices and technical architecture requirements. These requirements will match the data sovereignty requirements in specific jurisdictions where the company’s Sovereign Cloud operates.
In addition, the company is adding extra features such as NoSQL databases that are favored in highly regulated industries and Kafka as a Service, which incorporates real-time fraud detection and other crucial services.