VMware completes acquisition of Pivotal, connects infrastructure and application owners to boost software delivery, business outcomes

VMware announced Monday that it has completed the acquisition of Pivotal Software. With the completion of the acquisition, Pivotal’s Class A common stock was removed from listing on the New York Stock Exchange with trading suspended prior to the open of the market today, and Pivotal will now operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of VMware. The transaction represented an enterprise value for Pivotal of approximately $2.7 billion.

Under the terms of the transaction, Pivotal’s Class A common stockholders are entitled to receive $15.00 per share cash for each share held (without interest and less applicable tax withholdings), and Pivotal’s Class B common stockholder, Dell Technologies, received approximately 7.2 million shares of VMware Class B common stock, at an exchange ratio of 0.0550 shares of VMware Class B common stock for each share of Pivotal Class B common stock.

Pivotal’s offerings will be core to the VMware Tanzu portfolio of products and services designed to help customers transform the way they build, run and manage their most important applications, with Kubernetes as the common infrastructure substrate. 

The combination of Pivotal’s developer-centric offerings with VMware’s upstream Kubernetes run-time infrastructure and management tools will deliver a comprehensive enterprise solution that enables dramatic improvements in developer productivity in the creation of modern applications. VMware is able to offer product building blocks and integrated solutions that are tested and proven with technical expertise that customers need to accelerate software delivery across data center, cloud and edge environments.

“It's my pleasure to announce Ray O'Farrell as the leader of VMware’s new Modern Applications Platform business unit—uniting the Pivotal and VMware Cloud Native Applications teams,” said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware. “And as Pivotal is now part of VMware, I want to thank the Pivotal leadership team for building a great company. Together, we’re poised to be the leading enabler of Kubernetes with a deep understanding of both operators and developers.”

“Digital transformation and the applications that drive it should not be restricted only to cloud and software giants,” said Ray O’Farrell, executive vice president and general manager, Modern Applications Platform Business Unit, VMware. “We believe that modern application development solutions and practices need to be easily accessible to everyday enterprises across the globe. With Pivotal’s developer capabilities as the foundation, we’ll focus on delivering consumable, enterprise-ready cloud native offerings to customers to help them achieve better business outcomes.”  

“Pivotal has fundamentally changed how the world’s biggest brands build and manage software with a focus on developer productivity through platform abstractions and development techniques as well as connecting the business with the developer,” said Edward Hieatt, senior vice president, customer success, Pivotal. “The combination of Pivotal and VMware offers the most comprehensive application platform in the industry and is a win for our customers, a win for Pivotal, and a win for VMware. We’re excited to team up with VMware to help more enterprises become like modern software companies by adopting DevOps and Lean techniques developed by internet giants and the startup community.”

Numerous mutual customers including Raytheon have reacted positively to the news of the acquisition. “By working with both Pivotal and VMware, we’ve been able to completely transform how we write software for our military and government customers,” said Todd Probert, vice president for C2, Space and Intelligence at Raytheon. “Combining these companies under a single umbrella is going to make it possible for my team to get code to our customers even faster and easier.”

New VMware Global threat report identifies lateral movement, island hopping as key cyberattack tactics

VMware Carbon Black releases its semiannual Global Incident Response Threat Report (GIRTR), and it reveals that attackers are continuing to evolve.

VMware Carbon Black has a vast incident response (IR) partner ecosystem, comprising more than 100 leading IR firms. These partners use Carbon Black technology in more than 1,000 response engagements per year. Aggregated data from these top IR firms shows that cooperation among attackers is increasing. That makes it more important than ever for the good guys to fight back.

“Because geopolitical tension is playing out in cyberspace, targets must boost defenses,” says Tom Kellermann, VMware Carbon Black head cybersecurity strategist. “Beyond politics, financial motivation is a top driver. That means organizations with decentralized systems protecting high-value assets, including money, intellectual property, and state secrets, continue to be at high risk.”  

The GIRTR includes eight key research highlights. Three demonstrate significant increases since the last report include financial gain was the primary motivation for 90 percent of attacks. This is a sharp increase from 61 percent in the first half of 2019. It’s also a shift from previous years, when intellectual property theft and stealing customer information topped the list; “island hopping” continues to rise, as forty-one percent of total attacks came from this advanced method, where attackers target enterprises via partners and vendors; and IR pros said they experienced destructive/integrity attacks in about 41 percent of attacks, a 10 percent increase compared to the past two quarters.

The majority of cyberattacks now include tactics like lateral movement, island hopping and destructive attacks, according to the November report. Advanced hacking capabilities and services for sale on the dark web compound the issue, as does an unprecedented collaboration among nation-states, according to the report.

This most recent GIRTR also highlights the rise in custom malware, which the report defines as “coded with a specific purpose in mind, a sign of more sophisticated and well-financed attacks, as opposed to commodity malware, which is widely available for purchase or for free on the dark web.” 

Custom malware was used in 41 percent of attacks, up from 33 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to the report.

“This increase should also worry enterprises because of the pass-along effect. These attackers are like Johnny Appleseed,” says Kellermann.

Kellermann explains why people who build custom attack code sell it on the dark web; buyers use that purchased code to attack a company with it; and once that happens, the custom code builder can now teleport into the attacked company’s environment because he or she has administrative access to that attack code.

As communities of attackers come together, so, too, must defenders. And that’s exactly what VMware Carbon Black and top IR professionals are doing. They’re “fighting back as a global community with actionable intelligence and holistic strategies to mitigate the ongoing cyber insurgency online.”

University of Lausanne adopts Cohesity data management platform to boost time and cost savings, backup flexibility, scalability

Cohesity announced this week implementation of a comprehensive data backup solution for the University of Lausanne, located in Switzerland. Working in tandem with local partner Infoniqa, the solution deployed by the university is significantly faster and more automated and scalable than systems previously used. 

A complete backup of the Microsoft Exchange database now only takes eight hours instead of 29 and the incremental backup can be completed in just under two hours instead of the previous 7.5 hours.

With the new solution, the University of Lausanne is realizing simple, fast backup and disaster recovery on a single platform; easier management through integration with VMware and Avamar; significant time and cost savings in data backup and recovery; and compliance according to DSGVO by encryption of critical data.

With over 15,000 students, 5,000 employees, and two million documents, the university manages around 22 PB of logical data. For this purpose, a second backup solution was set up at the Neuchâtel site. 

As the licences for the existing system expired, the university was looking for a state-of-the-art solution that would meet a number of key requirements: secure critical data in encrypted form, high scalability, efficient recovery of mass data, compatibility with EMC NetWorker and the option of a hybrid cloud solution.

“Cohesity and Infoniqa take a modern and holistic approach to data management,” explains Michel Ruffieux, storage backup manager, University of Lausanne. “It was the only solution that met our requirement to secure critical data in encrypted form using a multi-tenant solution with private keys managed on a KMS server using the KMIP protocol.”

Cohesity and Infoniqa were able to combine the old and new backup systems at the University of Lausanne to cover the entire virtualized environment. Infoniqa enabled the platform to be deployed according to the customer’s requirements. Cohesity supplied four appliances, and additional servers can be added to this space-saving cluster in the future. This appliance group can also be used for storage with the same cluster concept.

With the Cohesity’s SnapTree technology, the university can now access the data in a maximum of three steps. Login takes less than five minutes and full flash recovery takes 11.5 hours. In addition, a web interface facilitates the recovery of a Windows or Linux virtual machine with granular files. This approach to using, managing and backing up secondary and primary data is one of Cohesity’s strengths.

Cohesity DataPlatform and DataProtect Software now tested and validated for AWS Outposts

Cohesity announced on Tuesday that it has completed validation that its Cohesity DataPlatform and Cohesity DataProtect software have capabilities to support AWS Outposts and are available immediately. 

AWS Outposts delivers fully managed and configurable compute and storage racks built with Amazon Web Services (AWS)-designed hardware that allow customers to run compute and storage on-premises, while seamlessly connecting to AWS’s broad array of services in the cloud.

Cohesity has tested Outposts and will be able to deliver positive customer outcomes at scale through re-architecting complex workloads to run on AWS Outposts. The Cohesity platform is designed to reduce backup costs and simplify data management operations. In order to support hybrid environments with data residing on-premises and in the cloud, the platform provides the customer with the flexibility to develop a data management strategy that supports their unique needs. 

The benefits of the Cohesity platform running on AWS Outposts include a single user interface across hybrid environments provides global visibility, search, and recovery for data across multiple AWS Regions and AWS Outposts. Cohesity supports backup of AWS Outposts workloads with agent or snapshot-based approaches to optimize for app-consistency, speed, and storage footprint.

The platform includes archiving flexibility with backup Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and VMware instances running on Outposts to archive to cloud on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), as well as other workloads outside of Outposts.It also brings down infrastructure costs by backing up entire legacy on-premises environment and archive to Amazon S3 without the need for additional backup infrastructure.

The offering also delivers global deduplication, compression, and direct integration to all Amazon S3 storage classes, including Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive, further reduces storage and data transfer costs over hybrid cloud.

“Cohesity is excited to offer our disruptive data management solutions to AWS Outposts customers. Our design philosophy aligns well with AWS, empowering customers to back up, protect, store, and manage their data wherever they choose — on-premises or in the cloud — through one platform with a single UI,” said Terry Ramos, vice president of alliances, Cohesity. “Cohesity DataProtect and Cohesity DataPlatform offerings are tested and validated to support AWS Outposts and are available today.”

AWS customers that have workloads on-premises want to be able to run AWS compute and storage on-premises, and easily and seamlessly integrate these on-premises workloads with the rest of their applications in the cloud. 

AWS Outposts delivers racks of AWS compute and storage — the same hardware used in AWS public region datacenters — to bring AWS services, infrastructure, and operating models on-premises. As an AWS Outposts Partner, Cohesity is able to help AWS customers overcome challenges that exist due to managing and supporting infrastructures both on-premises and in cloud environments and deliver positive outcomes at scale.

NetApp and Google Cloud help customers unlock the power of data with enterprise-class data services and solutions

NetApp and Google Cloud announced general availability of NetApp Cloud Volumes Service, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Google Cloud, and support for Anthos on NetApp HCI to help organizations focus on innovation across any hybrid environments.

As enterprises seek to take advantage of the agility and efficiency benefits of the cloud, they need to know that their data is secure and in the right place, for the right cost, at scale. 

To achieve these goals, they are building data fabrics that provide maximum flexibility as they move to hybrid multi-cloud environments. With NetApp and Google Cloud, customers can unlock the power of their data with integrated, enterprise-class data solutions that are optimized and validated for Google Cloud.

NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is a cloud-native, Google Cloud integrated file service with the performance, availability, and security required to efficiently run business-critical applications. Additionally, customers can run production workloads in Google Cloud. Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud is also now available in the United Kingdom region.

Also, now globally generally available, NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP for Google Cloud is a data management solution that accelerates the enterprise cloud journey by bringing enhanced data protection, storage efficiencies, and mobility to Google Cloud and hybrid multicloud environments.

NetApp HCI is a scalable, on-premises hybrid cloud infrastructure that transforms private clouds into a deployable region of a multicloud. NetApp HCI is now validated to work with Google Cloud’s Anthos, giving customers the peace of mind of a true enterprise-class platform validated with Anthos to reliably deploy and run their applications.

With NetApp Trident, a fully supported open source project, organizations can orchestrate a complex hybrid cloud environment that ties together Google Cloud, Anthos, and NetApp HCI on the premises. Enterprises can scale on demand and add compute or capacity as needed to meet business requirements, and choose from a range of application platforms, including Anthos, Kubernetes, VMware, and NetApp Kubernetes Service.

Meriplex takes on SD-WAN; boosts network uptime and decreases MPLS-driven costs

Meriplex Communications announced that it has aligned with Dell EMC for a newly launched, SD-WAN solution powered by VMware. This collaborative SD-WAN solution will be desirable to enterprise organizations as it brings Dell EMC capabilities to the market coupled with a MSP partner.

With Meriplex delivered Dell EMC SD-WAN powered by VMware, organizations can increase network uptime and cut MPLS-driven costs, allowing for an effective approach of automation and intelligence to overcome constantly evolving network challenges. 

Organizations will leverage their investment in existing WAN infrastructure while taking advantage of the features and capabilities of SD-WAN. With business security requirements for modern enterprises ever evolving, end-to-end data security is the most valuable infrastructure component for conducting a robust digital business, connecting with customers, and driving business growth. SD-WAN protects organizations through enhanced centralized and next-gen firewall capabilities and the ability to integrate cloud security solutions. 

It also delivers speed to deploy new branch organizations with increasing M&A activity and organic growth, which is required to open and operate new branch locations. SD-WAN eliminates prolonged wait times for circuit installation turnups, and with zero-touch capabilities, technical expertise on site is not necessary, allowing branch locations to start running instantaneously.

As cloud-based applications increase the necessity for high network performance, organizations now expect better reliability, dexterity, and flexibility from their WAN to maximize the cloud's economies of scale. SD-WAN allows this transformational shift from rigid, outdated WAN architecture, to move SaaS applications into cloud environments, enhancing business growth and providing better QoS for end-users.

The DIY SD-WAN takes a copious amount of time away from an IT department's ability to focus on business-critical projects. Many lack the first-hand experience and expertise to configure complex network integrations. With a managed SD-WAN solution, organizations free up their technical resources for higher business priorities and rely on an MSP, like Meriplex, to proactively monitor and manage the network 24/7 with SD-WAN experts.

With Meriplex and Dell EMC, organizations can bundle these benefits for SD-WAN, including integrated cloud security, speedy branch deployment, and connectivity to the cloud, into one cost-effective, turnkey SD-WAN solution. Meriplex offers a unique, co-managed service that allows organizations to operate in tandem with Meriplex to gain complete visibility and control into their solution.

Dell EMC PowerOne launches autonomous infrastructure that automates tasks, delivers ready-to-run resources in few clicks

Dell Technologies releases Dell EMC PowerOne autonomous infrastructure to make deploying, managing and consuming IT easier for organizations. 

PowerOne integrates PowerEdge compute, PowerMax storage, PowerSwitch networking and VMware virtualization into a single system combined with a built-in intelligence engine to automate thousands of manual steps over its lifecycle. 

At the heart of PowerOne's autonomous operations is a built-in, advanced automation engine. PowerOne empowers users to focus on their business, whether that means deploying workloads, applications, or developing new products and services. 

Much like lane assist, navigation and other features in autonomous vehicles, the vehicle does most operations on its own while the passenger must let the car know the desired destination. PowerOne's advanced automation allows administrators to state a desired business outcome – and the system calculates the best way to do the rest. 

The automation engine takes advantage of a Kubernetes microservices architecture and uses Ansible workflows to assist users by automating the component configuration and provisioning, delivering a customer-managed datacenter-as-a-service. 

PowerOne provides a single system-level application programming interface (API), giving users the control to create business objective-specific pools of resources. This API can be tied into existing tools, such as service portals, to deliver programmable versus manual IT operations. This is known as Infrastructure as Code - virtually eliminating the need to log in to individual component management systems. With PowerOne, organizations can create workload-ready VMware clusters in only a few clicks.

With PowerOne, users can assist  speeds installation and configuration using built-in workflows based on VMware Validated Designs and Dell EMC best practices. The Lifecycle Assist helps reduce infrastructure risk by simplifying daily operations and life cycle management with automated modular system updates and validation, continually checking the correct hardware and firmware settings. 

The offering also allows expansion that matches infrastructure with business needs by adding, removing or reassigning capacity and resources through automated provisioning and scaling features. Customers can align operations with business requirements.

Nokia and VMware expand partnership to ease large-scale, multi-cloud operations; accelerate VMware Ready for NFV Certification for Nokia’s portfolio of network functions

Nokia and VMware expanded on Thursday its alliance that includes the development of integrated solutions to support communications service providers’ (CSPs) drive for operational improvements and cost efficiency through large-scale, multi-cloud operations.

After years of working with virtual or cloud-based network functions in limited production deployments, CSPs need to build out these functions at scale to handle the increasing use of new data-intensive applications for tomorrow’s 5G and edge computing use cases. Success of this strategy is dependent on seamless interoperability and efficient operations of cloud-based network functions.

VMware and Nokia have a broad mutual customer base globally, across both companies’ portfolios. Through the expanded partnership announced today, the two companies will advance the interoperability between Nokia software applications and VMware’s Telco Cloud, including VMware vCloud NFV. 

Nokia and VMware will also increase their investments in a deeper partnership with technology collaboration and advanced research & development to develop integrated solutions. As a result, CSPs will be able to more easily meet their business and use case objectives, using VMware cloud infrastructure that is engineered to work together with Nokia virtualized and containerized network functions.

Nokia and VMware have been working together to create seamless cloud redundancy by running Nokia’s applications, such as Nokia Service Management Platform, on VMware’s Telco Cloud platform and VMware HCX, an application mobility platform designed for simplifying application migration, workload rebalancing, and optimized disaster recovery across data centers and clouds. 

This will enable customers to embrace a multi-cloud strategy to unify network and IT environments and connect them to private enterprise clouds, edge clouds, and public clouds.

Nokia will continue to focus on the technical certification of Nokia VNFs and software applications on VMware vCloud NFV platform through a dedicated, on-site VMware Ready for NFV Certification Lab. The new lab includes performance characterization to enable CSPs to properly configure their technology environments for the best results. 

With the Certification Lab, Nokia and VMware will serve customers in an accelerated fashion, keeping pace with new features and releases and enabling better roadmap alignment between the two companies’ portfolios.

Several Nokia software applications, such as Nokia CloudBand Application Manager and Nokia Smart Plan Suite, along with virtual IMS, virtual packet core and session border controller are already certified for operations in VMware cloud environments. These and others can be found on VMware Solution Exchange.

“We are pleased to see Nokia and VMware come closer together to enable a more seamless deployment of Nokia VNFs and CNFs on VMware’s Telco Cloud platform,” said Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi, senior vice president, strategy and technology innovation, Deutsche Telekom. “We see great value in these two companies’ portfolios featuring greater interoperability and believe the contribution this expanded partnership will make to a viable ecosystem will help us accelerate our digital transformation.”

“With the advent of 5G and edge computing, customers are adopting VMware’s container-ready Telco Cloud supported by innovative efforts like Project Maestro multi-domain orchestrator,” said Shekar Ayyar, executive vice president and general manager, Telco and Edge Cloud, VMware. “We are delighted to partner with Nokia to enable faster deployment of Nokia virtual and containerized virtual functions on VMware cloud infrastructure, ultimately helping our customers prepare their telco cloud networks for the future.”

“In today’s digital era, communications service providers expect software solutions to be cloud-native and hardware-agnostic, with multi-vendor and multi-network capabilities built in,” said Bhaskar Gorti, president of Nokia Software. “The expanded partnership we are announcing today gives Nokia and VMware greater scope and capacity to accelerate innovation and best anticipate and deliver against the expectations of our mutual customers.”