Nearly two-thirds of enterprises in developed countries have embraced various cloud computing services and the proportion of them for using hybrid clouds is expected to rise fast to about 90% in two years, according to Bernard Kwok, global vice president and Greater China president at for VMware.
With fast growing adoption of hybrid cloud services, VMware has plans to build datacenters in Seoul, Singapore and Hong Kong. Kwok recently talked to Digitimes about the company's latest deployments.
Q: IBM's acquisition of Red Hat at US$34 billion is seen as its move to expand presence in public and hybrid clouds to enhance competitiveness against AWS, Microsoft Azure, VMware Cloud on AWS and Google. What are your opinions on this?
A: VMware Cloud on AWS is a hybrid cloud solution for enterprises' seamless connection of private clouds with public clouds. Based on VMware's virtualization architecture used in enterprises' private clouds and its core technology of software-defined datacenter as well as vSphere, NSX and vSAN services, VMware Cloud on AWS enables complete virtualization of computing, storage and networking to gain a niche in the hybrid cloud market.
I'm not in a position to comment on IBM's acquisition of Red Hat. For VMware, promotion of private cloud services is centered on clients' convenience rather than VMware's. The architecture and operational management for VMware-developed hybrid cloud solutions are consistent with those for public and private cloud ones.
Q: What is the main difference between the global market and the Greater China market in the development of cloud computing services in terms of acceptability of technological innovation, and government policies' influence on the ecosystem?
A: In the Taiwan market, 19% of enterprises have adopted hybrid clouds and the proportion will rise to about 33% in two years. The situation is similar in China and Hong Kong. Companies who are sensitive to data storage and management may not use outside datacenters, medical care and telecom firms, educational organizations and small- to medium-size businesses are expected to increasingly adopt hybrid cloud services.
In view of the trend, VMware will actively set up infrastructures to help clients embrace virtualization, private and hybrid clouds. We will work with regional partners to offer products and services in the Greater China markets and advanced countries.
For hybrid cloud services, VMware helps enterprises shift internal datacenters to cloud computing mainly via vSAN and other services. We ensure consistency and security of data operation via cloud computing management platforms including VMware vRealize, while VMware Cloud Foundation 3.5 fuses private and public cloud services and increases support for application of containers. VMware has also cooperated with partners to expand hybrid cloud business, such as with IBM and Fujitsu in the global market, eASPNet Taiwan in the Taiwan market, Alibaba Cloud and Tencent in China.
Q: What is Taiwan-based enterprises' emphasis in cloud computing?
A: Mainly because existing IT systems are unable to completely meet demand in information security management, Taiwan-based firms are highly concerned about information security and have high requirements. As new hybrid cloud environments support containers and Kubernetes to meet enterprises' demand for digital transformation as well as quickly and flexibly launching new products and/or services, VMware will keep playing a role in boosting enterprises' digital transformation by promoting native software, platforms and applications.
While some research organizations forecast that the adoption of hybrid cloud solutions among companies using cloud services in Taiwan will rise to 33% two years from now, VMware hopes to hike it to about 60%. The acceleration of digital transformation is expected to fast enhance companies' competitiveness.
However, new products/services are key indicators of the extents of companies' digital transformation, and successful launches of new products/services hinge on sound, flexible and secure architecture for digitization. VMware's long-term efforts aim to build the cornerstones of architecture for digitization to allow clients to concentrate efforts in developing new products/services.
Bernard Kwok, global vice president and Greater China president at VMware
Photo: Max Wang, Digitimes, December 2018
Article translated by Adam Hwang
