HPE and VMware collaborate to deliver GreenLake for VMware Cloud Foundation

Digital transformations continue to accelerate, with the pandemic ushering in a new world of remote work and online services.

Hybrid cloud and multicloud solutions are two of the most attractive options to business leaders looking to join the digital revolution, but finding the best solution for every individual organization can be tricky. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and VMware Inc. joined together to bring an HPE GreenLake for VMware Cloud Foundation solution, based on a cloud operating model.

“With HPE being able to deliver an integrated solution with VMware Cloud Foundation and GreenLake, we can offer customers a performant, secure and economical solution on-premises,” said Dave McGraw (pictured, right), vice president of the Office of the CTO at VMware. “Delivering local cloud services, supporting infrastructure as a service and also application development on-premises as well becomes a very important component of a supercloud strategy going forward.”

McGraw and Ricky Cooper (pictured), head of worldwide partner and commercial sales at VMware, spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin at HPE Discover, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how VMware and HPE are simplifying cloud solutions, what changes are occurring in the cloud transformation market and how different businesses are approaching the journey. (* Disclosure below.)

The first steps are the hardest

VMware estimates that 80% of businesses haven’t even begun their cloud transformation journey. This means that for HPE and VMware, the main starting point is just bringing companies on board with cloud strategies and giving them options to fit their needs, such as building cloud-native applications or even having an on-premises solution.

“Whether you’re on a local, private or VMware Cloud, you ultimately have consistent skills required, so an infrastructure admin, a cloud admin doesn’t have to re-skill,” McGraw said. “For the developer, we provide them with Tanzu Application Platform that gives them the tools they need to run a secure, compliant and very performant and efficient application factory from a development perspective.”

Managed service providers are gaining in popularity as well, with MSPs supplying businesses with all the digital infrastructure and support they need without sacrificing resources and time. Changes like these are directly impacting the cloud transformation market, simplifying the transition and hosting alternative solutions better suited for different organizations.

“The other piece that we’re beginning to discover ourselves at VMware is, when you look at a product like Aria and CloudHealth, that’s given you that transparency, that single pane of glass to see where your applications sit, how much it’s costing you, everything else giving you the data to make informed decisions,” Cooper said. “It all comes back to there isn’t a right or wrong answer. It’s choice.”

One of the biggest problems facing businesses during their digital transformation journey is deciding which one or two cloud providers to ultimately implement into their infrastructure. Every cloud provider offers its own benefits and requires its own expert and senior personnel to fully run, leaving a lot of businesses scratching their heads when faced with the decision.

“What we do on-premises is when we combine VMware’s Cloud Foundation with HPE GreenLake, we offer customers a consistent standard that in many cases they’re very familiar with managing a VMware environment. We extend that into the hyperscalers with VMware cloud on AWS, Google, Azure, Alibaba, Oracle and so on,” McGraw explained. “We give customers choice. They use the same skills so they don’t have to re-skill people four or five different times. And we give them the mobility for the workloads. We give them automation tools that allow them to move the workloads around.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of HPE Discover:

(* Disclosure: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Intel Corp. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither HPE and Intel nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE