The future of the VMware SDDC: where will it go next?

VMware has always been a company rooted in innovation. Where will it take its industry-leading SDDC stack next? Join us as we dust off our crystal ball.

2023 marks the 25th birthday of virtualisation and cloud computing firm VMware.

VMware is a quiet hero. Outside of the cloud world, you won't hear much about it – but its software-defined cloud solutions underpin a huge range of enterprises across the world.

Since its inception, VMware has had the same motto: "Deliver the trusted foundation to accelerate innovation."

Perhaps it's the simplicity of this mission statement that has helped it to stay at the top of its game for so long. The field of enterprise software is littered with casualties and drop-outs but VMware has outlived them all – even surviving Microsoft's attempt to undercut its vSphere solution.

It's an industry staple with a market value of around $12 billion – not least because all cloud providers have embraced it as a partner.

The first half of its mission statement is indisputable. VMware delivers the trusted foundation for enterprises working in healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace and many more industries.

And in terms of innovation, VMware has always been in the vanguard. It's moved with the times – from the early days of hypervisors to today's landscape of Kubernetes, containers and micro-segmentation. And it continues to look forward, exploring the new frontiers of quantum computing and generative AI.

So: what's next for VMware's software-defined data centre (SDDC)? To answer that question, we need to take a closer look at its current offerings.

What does VMware offer?

Part of the reason for VMware's runaway success is that it provides software that's vendor-agnostic and which can run on the majority of servers.

This software's primary aim is to virtualise data centres. The VMware SDDC is a bundle of software that virtualises different parts of those physical metal servers that enterprises rent from cloud providers.

It consists of three main building blocks: vSphere, vSAN and NSX. Each covers a different function of a physical data centre.

vSphere takes care of "compute", meaning CPU and RAM. vSAN looks after storage. And NSX is in charge of network and security. Together, they cover all the basic functionalities of a data centre.

Overseeing these three amigos is vCenter. This is the command centre where systems administrators automate, manage and troubleshoot. And the whole lot is presented as VCF – VMware Cloud Foundation.

When VMware started, single-cloud environments were the best you could hope for. Today, an enterprise with just one cloud is like a needle in a haystack. Multi-cloud infrastructure is the norm – and VMware has responded accordingly with its vRealize suite.

vRealize allows IT to manage multiple data centres from a single console. To take a real-world analogy, it's the difference between inviting your friends to a party one by one and setting up a group chat.

As cloud tech has advanced, so too has VMware. Its software is designed to work with Kubernetes clusters and container-as-a-service (CaaS) products in public, private and hybrid clouds.

We don't know exactly what the future holds for the SDDC. But we do know that VMware has innovation at its heart. As well as keeping abreast of the security and networking requirements of enterprises, VMware is also getting its teeth into the latest in tech – new technologies like quantum computing and generative AI.

VMware and innovation

VMware's Richard Munro characterises VMware like this: "The innovation process is basically built into the culture… It's in the fabric of everything we do as an organisation, and it starts with very simple things."

These simple things include empowering staff to critically probe the organisation's projects as they unfold: "Everyone's entitled to ask the question 'why'… Anyone from the business can ask those questions and has the agency to challenge the way we are thinking about things."

This critical mindset informs both VMware's research and its development – a mindset that is always asking, "What next?" and "How can we do this better?"

Quantum computing

Quantum computing is a rapidly growing field – but it's relatively new. That means that its security posture is still being smoothed out.

"Quantum-safety" is likely to be a term that gets used more and more over the coming years. VMware is ahead of the game, having already modified an existing app with crypto agility solutions to make it quantum-safe.

Generative AI

VMware has spotted an obvious but under-exposed truth about technology: it's often new platforms that lead to major advances. In recent years, PCs, the web and iPhones have all been a catalyst for innovation.

Generative AI language models like ChatGTP are now the talk of tech town – and VMware sees the potential for generative AI to be a platform for innovation.

We don't know the details yet – but it's clear that VMware is closely following AI to see how it can improve its software solutions.

NSX-T

NSX is the networking block in the SDDC stack – and it's recently had an upgrade.

NSX-T has replaced its predecessor, NSX-V – and it's a smoother, speedier and more agile solution.

Again, NSX-T shows how VMware is committed to innovating in response to the changing cloud landscape. Nowadays, you can safely assume that an enterprise's cloud environment will be a multi-cloud environment. Companies want the flexibility and security of multiple cloud solutions.

NSX-V wasn't incompatible with these. But if a company had multiple vCenters, each one had to have its own NSX manager. This quickly became an issue for IT technicians.

VMware saw the problem and responded with a new version of NSX that lets you manage multiple vCenters from a single pane of glass.

Oh, and it's also smoother, faster, more scalable and provides improved automation support. You can micro-segment until the cows come home and apply a full-stack firewall across all your workloads, no matter how complex your network.

Conclusion

VMware has innovation running through it like a stick of rock. Its SDDC is a road sign, not a weather vane – it leads the way in a changing cloudscape. Whatever happens next, we'll keep you posted…

Ascend Cloud Solutions is a global provider of cloud consultancy services and managed migrations. Our cloud computing experts know the VMware SDDC like few others on Earth. Need help making the most of your cloud? Don't hesitate to drop us a message .