VMware Inc. may end up becoming a force to be reckoned with in the infrastructure-as-a-service market after all, just not the way it originally planned. The computer and network virtualization company today debuted a new platform called Cloud Foundation that promises to help organizations manage and secure their off-premise workloads more effectively.

It combines VMware’s flagship vSphere virtualization software with its VSAN storage automation offering, NSX software-defined networking system and SDDC Manager, a new administration tool specifically geared towards public cloud deployments. The latter technology supposedly makes it possible to create a remote application environment in just a few hours.

After the setup is complete, it allows organizations to link their newly created implementation with their on-premise infrastructure so that applications are able to move back and forth. The entire setup can be managed using the same set of controls.

The company also provided a technology preview of its Cross-Cloud Services, which will allow customers to manage applications hosted in public cloud from IBM Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. It will be available initially only on IBM starting in the third quarter, but the clear intention is to bring the services to other clouds eventually.

The pitch to enterprise developers is simple, VMware Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said today at the opening keynote at the four-day VMworld conference in Las Vegas: “truly enabling an any-cloud architecture.” The company emphasized it was reaching out to companies as they expand more into the cloud. “We want to be your friend as you move to the public cloud,” said Guido Appenzeller, VMware’s chief technology strategy officer.

If the value proposition sounds familiar, that’s because VMware promised to provide similar functionality when it launched its vCloud Air infrastructure-as-a-service platform back in 2013. The vendor hoped to set the offering apart by providing interoperability with customers’ in-house vSphere deployments, but failed to gain significant traction due to its late entry into the market and modest feature set. It hopes to achieve more success this time around by making Cloud Foundation available on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure and the other better-established competitors that it sought to disrupt with vCloud Air.

VMware says that the new platform can be used to manage any off-premise workload regardless of whether it was originally created to run behind firewall or designed from the outset to run in the public cloud. It even provides support for containerized applications by taking advantage of vSphere’s built-in Docker integration.

And if customers need more advanced functionality than what is provided out of the box, they’ll be able to sign up for a set of value-added automation services that are currently undergoing development. The first three offerings in the series will focus on making it easier to migrate on-premise workloads to the cloud, integrating remote resources with in-house infrastructure and meeting security requirements.

This functionality should make Cloud Foundation much more appealing than VMware’s struggling infrastructure-as-a-service platform for customers that seek to link their on- and off-premise infrastructure. By removing the need for those users to compromise on functionality and limit themselves to vCloud Air in order to achieve such integration, the company hopes to better to address the growing cloud adoption within the enterprise, which is one of the most important trends on the industry’s agenda.

“This is the next step to broaden their total addressable market,” said Jean Bozman, vice president at Hurwitz & Associates. “The key looks like the orchestration layer.”

As an added bonus, it’s also leveling the playing field against Microsoft in the process. The software giant is targeting hybrid use cases as well with a hyperconverged appliance that plugs into Azure out of the box and provides unified management functionality similar to that of Cloud Foundation. The software giant is banking on the popularity of its infrastructure-as-a-service platform to drive adoption, while VMware is approaching the goal from opposite direction and trying to take advantage of its bigger on-premise install base. Only time will tell which strategy is more effective.

Not least, VMware trotted out IBM as a prime partner, an interesting development given IBM’s competition with Dell. IBM first announced a partnership with VMware in February but now has announced an expansion to enable easier hybrid cloud adoption. “The response has been absolutely phenomenal,” said Robert LeBlanc, IBM’s senior vice president of cloud, who said IBM is seeing growth of 50 percent month over month in moving VMware workloads to its cloud.

With reporting and photo from Las Vegas by Robert Hof

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