As enterprises embrace digital transformation, they must also consider the risk of local data regulations and over-dependence on a single cloud environment. Many seek to spread out the risk by adopting a multicloud strategy and hosting applications and resources with two or more cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
However, each cloud resource will have minor and major differences in their administrative and operational requirements that present a significant challenge for consistent and repeatable application deployment. VMware’s Cross-Cloud services integrate a portfolio of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to provide a unified solution to build, run, manage, and secure apps across any cloud environment.
The VMware Cross-Cloud services provide solutions for application development, cloud management, cloud infrastructure, edge solutions, integrated cross-cloud security, and an anywhere workspace via virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
See below to learn all about the VMware Cross-Cloud portfolio:
Review of VMware Cross-Cloud
- VMware Cross-Cloud and the multicloud management market
- VMware Cross-Cloud features
- VMware Cross-Cloud benefits
- VMware Cross-Cloud use cases
- VMware Cross-Cloud differentiators
- User reviews of VMware Cross-Cloud
- VMware Cross-Cloud pricing
- Conclusions
See more: The Cloud Computing Market
VMware Cross-Cloud and the multicloud management market
The various products in the VMware Cross-Cloud portfolio help clients manage multicloud deployments of applications and other resources.
Grand View Research estimates that the global multicloud management market reached $5.09 billion in 2020 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.3% from 2021–2028 to exceed $32 billion dollars. Verified Market Research estimates a lower overall revenue of $2.25 billion in 2020 but a slightly higher CAGR of 30.8% over the same time period.
VMware does not break out their specific revenue for this category, but it was ranked No. 1 by IDC in worldwide cloud system and service management software revenue in 2021.
Competitors in the market include:
- BMCÂ
- Centurylink
- CiscoÂ
- CitrixÂ
- CloudBolt
- Cloudmore
- CoreStack
- IBM
- MicrosoftÂ
- Oracle
VMware Cross-Cloud features
The key features of the VMware Cross-Cloud portfolio consist of the key features of integrated component applications:
- Application development: VMware Tanzu provides cloud-independent app development and integrated DevSecOps tooling.
- Cloud management: VMware Cloud Management enables IT teams to maximize performance, control costs, and maintain compliance with cloud monitoring and management.
- Cloud infrastructure: VMware Cloud allows teams to operate apps in a private cloud and deploy apps to any cloud or edge location.
- Edge solutions: VMware Edge Compute Stack offers the ability to build, run, and manage as well as connect and protect edge applications and infrastructure.
- Integrated cross-cloud security: VMware Cloud Security enables IT teams to correlate vulnerabilities with threats, detect misconfiguration, harden cloud workloads, automate remediation, and connect and protect distributed users and applications.
- Anywhere workspace: VMware Workspace One provides frictionless employee access to apps and data through a secured VDI as well as mobile device management and application control and delivery.
VMware Cross-Cloud benefits
When selecting VMware’s Cross-Cloud services, organizations enjoy five key benefits:
Flexible deployment options
Proper management of a multicloud deployment permits an organization to avoid vendor lock-in, optimize costs, and satisfy specific customer needs. For example, some government agencies and compliance standards might require the physical location of the hosted data or application to be located in a specific geographical area.
Improve development options
Automating multicloud deployments allows app developers to distribute, move, and optimize workloads across a combination of cloud, edge, and local resources. Developers can select the best mix of capabilities and ensure efficient orchestration of data to optimize application capabilities and performance.
Improve network performance
When deploying apps to customers, an organization can use multicloud options to find the lowest-latency connections for time-sensitive applications. Highly optimized interconnections can be achieved through faster private links between multiple cloud service providers.
Reduce complexity
Each cloud maintains unique administrative and operational requirements for servers, storage, databases, and application-hosting containers. When managing multiple cloud instances, a cloud resource manager can easily misconfigure the deployment or lose track of instances.
Using the VMware Cross-Cloud suite of tools removes the complexity of the deployment details with an easy-to-use interface. With the time-consuming details handled, the cloud resource manager can focus on more important tasks, such as optimizing performance and managing resources.
Reduce risk
Even though the cloud typically offers robust failover options, any specific cloud instance can suffer an outage. Maintaining a multicloud strategy allows for failover to move to a different cloud provider that is unlikely to experience simultaneous outage.
More importantly, developing applications optimized for a specific cloud environment may make the application unable to be easily moved in the future. Should a significant business disagreement arise, an organization may find themselves needing to move clouds but face significant application development costs to reconfigure the existing application to a new environment.
See more: Top Trends in Cloud Computing
VMware Cross-Cloud use cases
Customers use components of VMware’s Cross-Cloud portfolio in many different configurations to develop multicloud solutions that fit their needs. Here is how three different customers used the tools to their benefit:
IHS Markit
Serving 50,000 customers in 140 countries, IHS Markit provides 80% of the Fortune “Global 500” with data and analytics solutions. As the company grew, it realized that its in-house data centers could not keep up, but concerns about security and local data requirements caused hesitation to adopt the public cloud.
IHS Markit used NSX Data Center components of the VMware Cross-Cloud services package to securely deploy assets to VMware Cloud on AWS in addition to their own internal data centers.
“NSX enables us to have a single security strategy across a multicloud data center environment,” says Andrew Hrycaj, principal network engineer,IHS Markit.Â
“It’s multi-hypervisor and works with containers and public clouds, giving us the flexibility to deploy granular security policies wherever they are needed.”
LIXIL Corporation
With 55,000 employees in more than 150 countries, LIXIL Corporation makes building materials and housing products, such as faucets and valves.
LIXIL already used VMware and Google BigQuery and wanted to make use of its current on-premises investments in VMware, while it transitioned to a modern, standardized architecture that could take advantage of the flexibility of the public cloud, avoid vendor lock-in, and be responsive to local data requirements.
Using the common platform provided by the tools in the VMware Cross-Cloud portfolio allowed LIXIL to seamlessly and successfully migrate thousands of VMware virtual machines to the cloud, as the pandemic created new challenges for the global IT team.
“Over the past year, a digital business model has enabled us to not only meet evolving customer needs, but to also remain resilient amid disruption,” says Osamu Iwasaki, SVP and leader of system development and operations, LIXIL.Â
“Our digital infrastructure is built on a multicloud strategy, and VMware provides the ability and support across clouds to innovate quickly and efficiently.”
SGB-SMIT Group
As one of the largest independent manufacturers of power transformers in Europe, SGB-SMIT Group sought to expand rapidly through acquisition but also continue their corporate strategy of local production for rapid response to customers’ needs.Â
However, they quickly found themselves with a fragmented IT infrastructure that created security vulnerabilities, prevented consistent quality control, and led to unacceptable delays.
The company elected to use VMware Cross-Cloud technologies to distribute common tool sets, deploy standardized application developments, unify security, and create centralized monitoring of the IT infrastructure.
“VMware is the glue that holds our multicloud strategy together,” says Salvatore Cassara, CIO, SGB-SMIT Group.Â
“It allows us to share resources, tools, and data between Amazon, Google, and our own private cloud environments.”
VMware Cross-Cloud differentiators
When selecting VMware instead of a competitor, buyers often do so because of specific differentiating aspects of the offering.
Capabilities breadth
Few cross-cloud management solutions can offer the full spectrum of services available from VMware. Many will monitor performance or facilitate server deployment, but few also integrate app development, security, VDI workspaces, or edge solutions.
Security
VMware offers market-leading security solutions such as Cloud Security, Carbon Black, and Workspace One. While every client needs security, very few providers can bundle security with a multicloud management solution.
Trusted brand
VMware pioneered virtual machines and virtual desktop infrastructure. IT managers worldwide trust the VMware brand and have vast experience deploying, configuring, and using VMware products.
User reviews of VMware Cross-Cloud
As a portfolio of tools, review sites do not have reviews specifically for VMware Cross-Cloud services. However, the individual tools that make up the services have been rated by customers.
For example, below are the ratings for the VMware vRealize Operations tool, which is a VMware Cross-Cloud offering and helps manage multicloud environments (performance, planning, capacity, optimization, etc.).
| Review site | Rating |
| Gartner Peer Insights | 4.6 out of 5 |
| G2 | 4.4 out of 5 |
| PeerSpot | 4.2 out of 5 |
VMware Cross-Cloud pricing
The pricing for the VM Cross-Cloud services varies and depends upon the number of tools used, number of instances, and bulk discounts.
For example, vRealize-automation publicizes per operating system instance (OSI)Â pricing with rates that vary depending on the commitment:
- On-demand: $0.04527 per OSI per hour
- One year paid up front: $0.02797 per OSI per hour
- Three years paid up front: $0.02174 per OSI per hour
VMware also offers SaaS bundles that combine several different applications, but they do not publish the license rates on their website.
Conclusions
The VMware Cross-Cloud portfolio of tools has not yet reached the level of Microsoft Office where specific bundles are offered for a standardized price. However, organizations looking to develop multicloud strategies would benefit by considering VMware Cross-Cloud services.
Each tool in the portfolio provides reminders of critical factors to consider in planning, such as portability, security, and performance monitoring. Once a plan is in place, VMware Cross-Cloud services provides a one-stop shop to obtain bundled pricing for tools in the key categories for multicloud deployment and management.
