Enterprise data centers are on the move. They’re virtualizing into the multicloud, up the application stack into containerized and serverless environments, and all the way to the edge.

This past week at its annual conference, VMware Inc. showed that it is well-positioned to dominate the software-defined data centers of enterprises the world over, or at least sustain its impressive growth in serving the market. However, it’s not yet clear whether VMware’s momentum in cloud computing is likely to continue long-term or it’s simply a short-lived burst of energy before its public cloud partners cement their dominance over the future of virtualized computing.

In the Wikibon Action Item event wrap Wednesday on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, Peter Burris, David Floyer and I offered our takeaways. Here’s an overview of the main topics we discussed, including some additional thoughts I’ve had in the 24 hours since I participated in the discussion:

Is multicloud computing the new mainstream of enterprise IT?

“VMware is moving it to right place,” said Floyer. “We see an embrace of multiclouds by everybody. One cloud won’t do it. There will be multiple clouds providing the best places to put various workloads. There’s an acceptance now in the marketplace for multiclouds and the richness of the ecosystem is amazing.”

VMware’s announcements at the event showed that the company agrees with this perspective. Now 20 years old, VMware took diverse steps to strengthen its ability to manage, secure and optimize software-defined data centers that deploy vSphere in diverse hybrid and multicloud deployments. Specifically, it:

• Added to its tooling the ability to automate host-based workload placement across vSphere running in multicloud environments;
• Added the ability to automate optimization of virtual machine performance, scaling of distributed workflows and provisioning of capacity across multicloud vSphere deployments;
• Announced enhancements to NSX-T Data Center that extend its multicloud networking, workload migration and security to more clouds and on-premises environments, as well as bare-metal and containerized computing platforms;
• Integrated AppDefense with vSphere’s native security to simplify lockdown of applications, infrastructure, data and access across software-defined data centers;
• Launched a new cloud configuration security and compliance service, VMware Secure State, that indexes application assets across hybrid and multiclouds running on VMware; automates cloud configuration security and compliance monitoring; identifies cloud-native vulnerabilities and threats, tracking all changes to cloud infrastructure in real time and providing fast notifications for object changes and impacted services; and delivers on-demand compliance benchmark reports; and
• Announced its intent to acquire CloudHealth Technologies, which provides tools for simplifying operations across multiple native public clouds, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

On theCUBE at VMware 2018, Joe Kinsella, founder and chief technology officer of CloudHealth Technologies, seemed to be speaking for his soon-to-be new parent company when he stated that “what’s happened is in the last 24 months is enterprises went from being a single cloud to pervasive multicloud.”

Are public cloud providers losing momentum in their attempts to dominate the future of enterprise computing?

Public cloud providers are one of the fastest growing segments of the enterprise computing space. However, VMware’s deepening investments in its relationship with AWS, the leading public cloud provider — and lack of equivalent integration with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and others — points to a parallel trend that Wikibon has been calling out in our research: the growing enterprise reliance on hybrid clouds.

What’s different now in the VMware/AWS relationship, according to Burris, is that Wikibon is “seeing a bilateral relationship,” rather than a “one-way to cloud” in which VMware loses leverage with enterprise customers to its dominant public cloud partner. This is because both cloud providers need each other to bolster their respective hybrid-cloud value propositions and thereby withstand increasingly fierce competition from other public cloud providers — such as Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp. — that are firmly ensconced in private-cloud customer deployments.

As such, it’s clear that VMware and AWS are both deeply committed to this partnership. That was made abundantly clear in the day-one keynote joint presentation by VMware Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger (pictured) and his AWS counterpart Andy Jassy. And both of the companies have committed significant financial resources to growing the relationship, as indicated by the following announcements this week:

• Expansion of the global footprint of VMware Cloud on AWS into Asia-Pacific;
• Growth in the roster of partners globally that have achieved VMware Cloud on AWS Solution Competency;
• Diversification in the range of validated commercial solutions from VMware Technology Alliance Partners for VMware Cloud on AWS;
• Significant reduction in the entry-level price and footprint for VMware Cloud on AWS;
• More fine-grained capacity-based pricing for VMware Cloud on AWS;
• Tightened integration, by means of NSX and AWS Direct Connect, to enable private, consistent connectivity between VMware workloads running on VMware Cloud on AWS and those running on-premises;
• Introduction of automated cluster scaling on VMware Cloud on AWS;
• Addition of scalable storage options involving VMware vSAN on Amazon Elastic Block Storage;
• Support for nondisruptive virtual-machine migration and more granular application-centric security features for VMware Cloud on AWS; and
• Launch of Amazon Relational Database Service on VMware Cloud on AWS, enabling RDs to run popular enterprise databases on-premises as a VMware-managed service, while automating database management regardless of where the databases are physically deployed.

Is the true private cloud experience jeopardized by the move away from unitary private or public clouds toward multiclouds?

User experience is definitely at risk as enterprises virtualize their servers, storage, compute, networks and desktops across extraordinarily complex multiclouds.

That probably explains why Gelsinger used the reassuring (albeit antiquated) metaphor of “dial tone” to describe VMware’s simplicity value proposition in this new environment.

In the same vein, Burris had a great observation when he said that “what VMware wants to do is have AWS, Azure and other public clouds look like an appliance to the customer from within their [VMware management] console, as well as have VMware assets running inside those public clouds, but with VMware as the control/management point to all of those.” But, he added, VMware “still needs an edge story that can realize that one-throat-to-choke multicloud management ambition.”

Clearly, VMware has its work cut out for it in ensuring that its user-experience virtualization portfolio — focused on Workspace ONE and Pulse IoT Center — can ensure experience simplicity even as the range of IoT, mobile, embedded and other multicloud access points continues to grow.

But, as I said on the Wikibon Action Item at the event, nobody else comes close to VMware in providing that unifying multicloud experience layer all the way to every desktop and device. The forthcoming “Project Dimension” aims to take simplicity the next step into the edge, providing a hyperconverged appliance that essentially integrates core VMware virtualization stack (VMware Cloud Foundation, vSphere, vSAN and NSX SD-WAN) and a “one throat to choke” subscription service. And it will be one under which VMware will manage the devices holistically and 24×7 wherever they’re deployed in the customer’s edge, private, hybrid and multicloud environments, with built-in security and workload isolation.

Another VMware project for bringing a simplified experience to the multicloud is  “Project Magna.” This involves development of an artificial intelligence-driven edge-to-edge virtualization environment to enable a “self-driving data center” that leverages machine learning in hundreds of “internet of things” control points.

Conceivably, “Project Magna” will intersect with a machine learning-driven capability that VMware has already added to NSX, its network virtualization platform. At VMworld 2018, the company announced adaptive microsegmentation, a feature of NSX and AppDefense, that uses ML to learn normal application behavior. Then it uses that knowledge to lock down compute and network resource, and to adapt the distributed virtualization fabric through automated, nondisruptive adjustments to application “attack surfaces” in order to mitigate threats.

What platform capabilities are pivotal to the future of software-defined networking?

Burris, Floyer and I agreed that NSX is hugely important in VMware’s cloud-to-edge virtualization roadmap, but that it currently lacks some important capabilities.

“NSX may be jewel in the extended cloud, predicated on this idea that network can bridge, interoperate, and internetwork with a lot of cloud sources,” said Burris. “There are not a lot of candidates [other than VMware] that can do that. Is NSX going to be a ‘new TCP/IP’ for the cloud, but with support for more agile workload placement, movement and security?”

An edge-to-edge “AIops” capability is central to the promise of a “self-driving data center.” We agreed that it’s good to see that VMware has placed a high priority on “Project Magna” as a future capability to be built into its portfolio to bring the vision of “self-driving data centers” to fruition.

Likewise, microsegmentation is also critical for fine-grained policy-based management of resource provisioning, governance, monitoring and control. The importance of microsegmentation, said Floyer, comes in IT managers’ need to “know what’s connected to what” at every level up from the core virtualization fabric up through applications and services and out to every IoT, mobile and other edge devices.

VMware is already making a strong showing in microsegmentation. As noted above, VMware AppDefense now supports adaptive microsegmentation for end-to-end automated and nondisruptive security throughout NSX.

In a sign that the company is leveraging microsegmentation across its increasingly edge-oriented solution portfolio, its parent Dell Technologies announced its new IoT Solution for Surveillance. The forthcoming hyperconverged, preintegrated edge-to-cloud solution incorporates built-in security that leverages NSX-T’s micro-segmentation and the ability to push real-time over-the-air updates and security patches from the cloud to potentially thousands of edge-based surveillance cameras at the same time.

In addition, the new version 2.0 of VMware Pulse IoT Center, will leverage microsegmentation to secure, manage and monitor edge endpoints, gateways, embedded PCs and server hardware at a granular level. These capabilities — consumable as an on-premises or SaaS solution — offer fine-grained remote administration tools, more stringent security for distributed devices and their embedded applications within edge-based software-defined data centers, and support role-based user access and multitenancy for isolation among distinct organizations, use cases and cloud-to-edge workloads.

Considering that the IoT and many other edge scenarios involve real-time, streaming and continuous computing, it was clear to Floyer, Burris and me that VMware need to develop, acquire, license and/or partner for the requisite low-latency platform technologies. These are notably lacking from its portfolio, just as stateful streaming backplanes such as Apache Kafka are also missing from its Kubernetes and containerization portfolio. Likewise, VMware hasn’t significantly refreshed the serverless component of its go-to-market strategy focused on the new generation of cloud microservice developers accessing virtualized fabrics through functional programming.

Considering how strong AWS is in the core technology areas where VMware is wanting — real-time, streaming, serverless and AI — Wikibon expects to see Gelsinger and his newly resurgent colleagues tap into this intellectual property to advance its virtualization story going forward.

Here’s the full Action Item:

What do you think? Please join Wikibon for a community CrowdChat on the topic of whether VMware is a new cloud leader. We will debate this and other questions flowing out of the VMworld 2018 experience. The crowdchat will take place at noon EDT on Wednesday, Sept. 5. Click here, log in with your Twitter account, and we would love to hear your thoughts on these topics.

Photo: VMware/VMworld livestream