Software-defined data centres: Where server virtualization meets the Cloud
Bangalore, April 17, 2014 – Global virtualization and cloud infrastructure leader, VMware is to increase its investment in India by another half a billion dollars over the next three years. It comes, just a year after the company announced a multi-year investment of $120 million which included the construction of a 42,000 square metre facility in Bangalore.
Yesterday's announcement here, by CEO Pat Gelsinger, would seem to indicate a key role for VMWare's India workforce in helping to deliver the three elements of its new virtualization vision: the software-defined data center, hybrid cloud and end-user computing.
"The country’s outstanding engineering talent continues to impress us, and we stay committed to investing and growing our team here over the long term", Gelsinger said. He made specific mention of the Indian contribution to flagship VMWare offerings like the NSX network virtualization platform; the Horizon 6 end-user computing solution and key elements of the back up Disaster Recovery-as-a-service offering.
"A tectonic shift is taking place from client-server-based computing to mobile and cloud-based computing", Gelsinger added, "Yet 90 percent of enterprise data assets continue to be located on-premise and only 10% has shifted to the cloud. We are helping to stimulate a secular shift to the cloud by offering the industry's first hybrid cloud solution where data and assets can be seamlessly shifted on demand, from own premises or private cloud to the public cloud."
Having pioneered the virtualization of servers in a pre-cloud era, VMWare is today helping to virtualize the network (NSX) as well as storage ( Virtual SAN), even while providing industry-first solutions in the management of cloud automation ( vCloud Hybrid service), Gelsinger explained.
VMWare's India Managing Director, T Srinivasan, added that the company’s R&D and support operations in India ( in Bangalore and Pune) are second in size and scale only to those at VMware’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California. In 2013, company headcount in India grew 17 percent to 2,300, while the recent acquisition of AirWatch the world's largest mobile security and enterprise mobility management provider, has added additional employees in Bangalore.
If you have 25 minutes, we encourage you to look at a recording we are putting up for a few days, in our Tech Video spot on the home page, of Pat Gelsinger's keynote at Interop, Las Vegas on April 4, where he lays out the contours of the Software-defined Data Centre.