VMware today announced a bevy of updates to its portfolio of IT management tools that is now at the heart of its overall approach to both DevOps and AIOps.
VMware vRealize Operations 8.2 and VMware vRealize Operations Cloud, the on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) editions of the same IT automation platform, provide deeper support for Kubernetes distributions, including the VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, as well as tighter integration with application performance management (APM) platforms from AppDynamics, Datadog and Dynatrace.
VMware is also providing tighter integration with its VMware vRealize Network Insight to bridge the divide between IT and network operations and tools to better monitor instances of VMware software running on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud.
Enhancements to the capacity and cost management tools that VMware makes available as part of the platform include more visibility into daily virtual machine (VM) costs, enhanced metering capabilities and support for non-VMware vRealize Automation workloads.
At the same time, VMware is making updates to VMware vRealize Automation and VMware vRealize Automation Cloud. The latest updates to the VMware automation platform add support for VMware Cloud Templates, a way to manage infrastructure as code that is compatible with configurations created using Terraform tools.
Other enhancements include self-service provisioning of Kubernetes namespaces via the service catalog, including support for VMware vSphere with Kubernetes, as well as more granular role-based access controls and application programming interfaces through which policies for VMware NSX network virtualization software can be applied.
Updates to VMware vRealize Log Insight and vRealize Log Insight Cloud add enhanced Kubernetes support, deeper integration with VMware Cloud on AWS and other usability enhancements.
Finally, VMware is streamlining the onboarding process for VMware Skyline, a predictive analytics tool the company makes available as an extension of its operations management portfolio.
Ken Lee, senior director of product marketing for VMware, said VMware vRealize Cloud Management portfolio is evolving in a way that makes it accessible to both traditional IT administrators and DevOps teams. Each function in the platform can be invoked via a graphical user interface or application programming interface (API), he said.
At the same time, VMware is infusing machine learning algorithms across the portfolio to enable AIOps, eliminating the need for IT organizations to acquire a separate IT management platform to employ AIOps or embrace best DevOps practices, he said.
While the number of IT organizations that employ virtual machine software from VMware numbers in the hundreds of thousands, the number of organizations employing its IT operations platform is still measured in the hundreds. The company clearly enjoys the inside track in terms of relationships with those customers. However, it’s clear that the number of IT organizations relying on tools other than those provided by VMware to manage their environments is significant.
As IT organizations look to modernize those IT environments, however, there is clearly an opportunity for VMware to gain additional traction. The challenge is the race to embed AI and DevOps practices into IT operations platforms is already quite heated.
