VMware, Inc. today announced the industry's first unified platform of virtualized compute, networking and storage for the hybrid cloud. Defined in software, VMware's platform will enable customers to create one consistent environment across the private and public cloud to run, protect and manage any cloud-native or traditional application. The platform will also offers customers openness and choice in how to build and manage their applications and cloud environments based on their specific needs.

The manner in which businesses create value is changing significantly, shifting value from hard assets to the more liquid assets of software and data. In this time of transition, IT is adopting the cloud to increase agility. In doing so, IT must sort out the mire of "somewhat" compatible on- and off-premises cloud platforms. And, they must do all of this while managing the requisite levels of security and compliance. VMware is helping customers through this time of transition by putting software and data at the core of the business to enable a new model of IT.

"Every traditional industry across the globe is being transformed by software," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware, Inc. "To navigate and thrive in the face of this change, businesses must be decisive in the face of uncertainty. Today, we are taking another leap forward in helping our customers meet these demands through a unified platform, defined in software, which will offer unmatched choice and extends our innovations across compute, networking and storage to deliver the hybrid cloud."

The Industry's First Unified Platform for the Hybrid Cloud
Unveiled today during a live event in San Francisco, VMware detailed the following new solutions and services for the hybrid cloud:

VMware vSphere 6 - The Foundation for the Hybrid Cloud
Featuring more than 650 new features and innovations VMware vSphere 6 delivers breakthrough new capabilities to address the unique needs of business-critical and cloud-native applications with higher performance, scale and consolidation ratios. VMware vSphere 6 also re-defines infrastructure and application service-levels and availability.

VMware Integrated OpenStack - A Simpler Path to OpenStack
VMware Integrated OpenStack is an OpenStack distribution that will enable organizations to quickly and cost-effectively provide developers with open APIs to access VMware's enterprise-class infrastructure. VMware packages, tests and supports all components of the distribution, including the open source OpenStack code, and will provide the distribution free of charge to VMware vSphere customers. Read more about VMware Integrated OpenStack.

VMware Virtual SAN 6 and vSphere Virtual Volumes - A New Generation of Enterprise Storage
Designed to enable mass adoption of software-defined storage, VMware Virtual SAN 6 will introduce significant scalability and performance enhancements to the company's award-winning hypervisor-converged storage solution. Additionally, VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes will offer a new level of storage integration to make external arrays natively aware of virtual machines. Read more about VMware's software-defined storage strategy and solutions.

VMware vCloud Air Hybrid Networking Services powered by VMware NSX
Expanding on integration work announced earlier this year, VMware revealed vCloud Air hybrid networking services that will help customers bridge VMware's vCloud Air public cloud service and VMware vSphere-based private clouds to enable a single, secure network domain through a gateway appliance. VMware NSX is a network virtualization platform that delivers the entire networking and security model from L2-L7 in software. VMware NSX is being deployed as the networking foundation for VMware vCloud Air. Available via a phased release starting in the first half of 2015, VMware vCloud Air hybrid networking services will enable customers to maintain hundreds of virtual networks spanning the private cloud and vCloud Air over a single WAN connection, and share the same fine-grained "zero trust" security policies and network isolation for applications, unchanged.

VMware's unified platform includes advanced virtualization support for developers and system administrators who are leveraging continuous delivery and container-based distributed application technologies. Businesses rely on VMware's industry leading compute, networking and storage innovations, integration with the OpenStack framework, and integrations with containers and Kubernetes, the open-source container orchestration project initiated and managed by Google. This support helps customers achieve fast, flexible and reliable development, deployment and consumption of business-critical and cloud-native applications across the hybrid cloud.

VMware vSphere 6, VMware Integrated OpenStack, VMware Virtual SAN 6 and VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes are expected to become available in Q1 2015.