Google Deal Adds VMware to Hybrid Cloud Offerings
Public cloud vendors continue to expand options offered to enterprise customers looking for a painless way to migrate more workloads to the cloud via VMware tools while preserving their investment in existing IT infrastructure.
In July, Google announced another in a series of cloud partnerships, this one with startup Cloud Simple that allowed enterprises to move “priority” VMware workloads to the public cloud.
This week, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) took the partnership a step further by acquiring Cloud Simple, a move that would allow VMware (NYSE: VMW) customers to run vSphere-based workloads on Google Cloud. The goal is to create a hybrid cloud option for VMware customers to use, for example, applications containers as well as software-defined workloads.
Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ: AMZN) offers a similar cloud option for VMware users, as does Microsoft Azure (NASDAQ: MSFT).
Google said Monday (Nov. 18) the acquisition responds to enterprise requirements to run workloads either in-house or in the cloud to better utilize existing infrastructure. That requirement reflects the steady shift to multi-cloud deployments, a trend that could allow public cloud vendors like Google to keep pace with market leader AWS.
Google noted that VMware customers running on-premise workloads such as business applications, Oracle and SQL Server databases as well as data analytics are looking for hybrid cloud options. “As part of their IT modernization initiatives, we hear frequently from enterprise customers that they need a simple way to migrate those workloads to the cloud,” Rich Sanzi, vice president of engineering at Google Cloud, noted in a blog post announcing the Cloud Simple acquisition.
Cloud Simple has previously partnered with VMware. Ajay Patel, a VMware senior vice president, said its expanded partnership with Google would enable their customers to run workloads on VMware Cloud Foundation in the Google cloud.
The combination would allow customers “to leverage all of the familiarity of VMware tools and training, and protect their investments, as they execute on their cloud strategies and rapidly bring new services to market and operate them seamlessly and more securely across a hybrid cloud environment,” Patel added.
Last year, Google and VMware unveiled a cloud plug-in that linked a pair of VMware tools designed to enable provisioning of virtual machines and storage on the search giant’s cloud.
Guru Pangal, Cloud Simple’s founder and CEO, said he launched the startup in 2016 after recognizing that companies were looking for a faster, easier way to move enterprise workloads from datacenters to the cloud.
“We realized VMware was the platform of choice for enterprise applications, and we needed to first enable VMware workloads in the cloud. VMware supported us in our efforts to partner with Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure,” Pangal said.
The result was Cloud Simple’s operating system used to “manage dedicated clouds within public clouds,” he added.
