Looking to create a catalyst to spur enterprises to move the cloud, VMware has unveiled a host of new cloud infrastructure products and services designed to expand its offerings through the enablement of a hybrid cloud model that bridges private and public clouds. The virtualization giant made the announcements this week at its VMworld conference in San Francisco.
VMware’s new offerings include virtualized systems management, virtualized system security, hosted cloud data center services delivered through service provider partners and VMware cloud consulting services. Together, VMware says the offerings will enable enterprises to make the move to the cloud that they haven’t been able to make in the past. The solutions, VMware says, deliver the answers to enterprise objections such as security, uncertain SLAs, and lock-in. Here’s a look at VMware’s announcements.
VMware vCloud Director
According to VMware, the new VMware vCloud Director extends the resource pooling capabilities of VMware vSphere, enabling IT to create “virtual data centers” (VDCs) – logical pools of compute, network and storage resources with defined management policies, SLAs and pricing. IT organizations can offer these VDCs – along with catalogs of other infrastructure and application services such as virtual appliances, VMs, and OS images – to users through fully automated self-service access. VMware says the solution enables IT organizations to act as service providers to the business, achieving the benefits of cloud computing without sacrificing security or control.
The VMware vShield product family
VMware is beefing up security with three new products designed specifically for virtual and cloud environments. VMware vShield Edge, VMware vShield App, and VMware vShield Endpoint virtualize security and edge services, including firewall, VPN and load balancing, to free them from the constraints of physical infrastructure and provide a single, adaptive and programmable security infrastructure.
VMware vCloud Datacenter Services
VMware vCloud Datacenter Services, delivered by service provider partners, provide a way for enterprises to extend their datacenters to external clouds, while preserving security, compliance and quality of service, according to VMware. Providers include Bluelock, Colt, SingTel, Terremark and Verizon. VMware says that globally consistent infrastructure, management and security models used by these providers make it possible for enterprise customers to move computing workloads from internal virtualized infrastructure to an external cloud and back.
VMware vCloud Consulting Services
VMware’s vCloud Consulting Services portfolio of professional service offerings are based on VMware’s experience helping enterprises and service providers build cloud architectures, and offer assessment, planning, design, and deployment services for IT infrastructure transformation
Virtualization 
