UPDATED 16:00 EDT / DECEMBER 06 2017

CLOUD

AWS Greengrass and vSphere spread holiday cheer for hybrid-cloud users

Among the many things that information technology customers have on their holiday wishlists this season, one likely top request is hybrid-cloud consistency. They want the same software to manage public cloud and on-premises data centers and remove infrastructure management headaches.

Last month, the partnership of VMware Cloud and Amazon Web Services Inc. received another boost with expanded support of more multiple software-designed data centers per organization to run VMware workloads. And now AWS Greengrass on VMware vSphere will expand the hybrid model by allowing certain AWS services to run in the data center or at the edge.

“We want to have cloud services being able to execute where the data is being created, and that’s a natural use case for virtualization,” said Chris Wolf (pictured), vice president and chief technology officer, Global Field and Industry, at VMware Inc. “I want it to run wherever the business requirements say it needs to run.”

Wolf stopped by the set of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with host Stu Miniman (@stu) and guest host Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) during the AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. They discussed the integration of compute functions at the edge, the involvement of VMware’s user group, and continued innovation in the hybrid-cloud model. (* Disclosure below.)

Innovation moves to the edge

AWS Greengrass allows organizations to run a wide range of functions, including messaging, data caching and cloud compute, at the edge. The integration of Greengrass with vSphere places cloud services where devices live and data is flowing.

“The innovation that’s occurring at the edge is extremely exciting,” Wolf said. “It’s about a platform for rapid agility and innovation.”

As announcements, such as the recent collaboration with AWS, roll out, VMware has been focused on communicating its strategic approach with a global community of users. The VMware User Group was launched more than seven years ago and provides an opportunity for the company to reinforce a message of transformation in modular IT architectures.

“Partners, the more innovative ones, are now building hybrid applications across VMware and AWS components and modernizing enterprises that way,” Wolf said. “We’re trying to encourage our VMUG community to do the same thing.”

The partnership between the two companies is giving rise to different scenarios where applications are moved into the VMware Cloud and then integrated with native AWS services. One customer is evaluating an integration of AWS Lambda (serverless computing) with database and file system events in virtual machines running on vSphere, according to Wolf.

“There’s this whole new way of modernizing applications that we’re just at the cusp of,” Wolf said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (* Disclosure: Amazon Web Services Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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