Dive Brief:
- VMware announced Monday at VMworld 2016 that the company will expand its partnership with IBM, which allows customers running VMware software to do so on IBM Cloud.
- The new service and strategic partnership is designed to enable organizations to more easily transfer enterprise workloads to the cloud. Now, with the VMware Cloud Foundation available on IBM's cloud, customers can more easily migrate existing apps to the cloud, according to the announcement.
- VMware also introduced Cross-Cloud Services to further help enterprises manage applications across multiple cloud environments.
Dive Insight:
Cross-Cloud Services will companies to "run, manage, connect and secure" their applications across multiple clouds, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud, according to a VMware announcement.
In working together, VMware and IBM will have access to each other’s market shares, potentially giving them a leg up in the lucrative cloud market, especially as companies look to use more than one cloud provider. Recent studies indicate businesses are more commonly choosing to work with more than one cloud provider to meet multiple needs.
"Enterprises need fast and easy ways to deploy and move workloads between on-premises and public cloud environments," said Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president, IBM Cloud. "Our collaboration with VMware is becoming the glue for many organizations to scale and create new business opportunities while making the most of their existing IT investments in a hybrid cloud environment."
Since the partnership was initially announced, the company has gained more than 500 new clients running VMware software on IBM Cloud, including Marriott International.
