A suite of new solutions focuses on hybrid workforces, data sovereignty and multicloud.
VMware Explore 2022 Europe was held in Barcelona this November, and throughout the event there were announcements of expansions to existing solutions and many new solutions targeted at companies’ digital transformations.

The big focus of the event was company cloud journeys and helping to make it easier and simpler for companies to migrate increasingly complex workloads to the cloud. Along those lines, the multicloud featured heavily in the discussions and announcements of the events, confirming the industry’s shift towards products that enable a multicloud strategy. To that point, several of the announcements were aimed at improving interoperability and security across diverse cloud products from any vendor.
So, let’s dig into everything engineers need to know about the event.
VMware Continues to Invest in the Multicloud Future
An ongoing focus of VMware is to provide solutions catered to the multicloud. In recognizing increasingly diverse IT environments, the multicloud has emerged as the ideal strategy for companies looking to utilize solutions catered to their specific workloads. The big issue with a multicloud approach remains the increased complexity and security issues that accompany disparate cloud solutions. Interestingly, despite these issues, companies seem more excited than ever to embrace a multicloud strategy, avoid vendor lock-in, and use solutions specific to diverse workloads.
So, VMware and its ecosystem partners are continuing to develop the “Cloud Smart” approach to IT. This is their answer to the multicloud, where companies strategically deploy cloud products to ensure every workload is housed in its ideal environment.
“VMware and its partners continue to deliver new innovative offerings to help customers benefit from a cloud-smart approach,” said Raghu Raghuram, CEO, VMware. “Customers recognize that a multi-cloud environment provides them a choice of clouds—sovereign and global—in which to run their apps. VMware is there every step of the way to help customers turn multi-cloud complexity into competitive advantage.”
During the event, the company announced VMware Carbon Black XDR to improve security across endpoints, networks and more within a multicloud IT infrastructure.
“As multi-cloud environments grow in complexity, security teams are challenged with increasing sophistication and scale of attacks. They can no longer rely on disparate security approaches that leave blind spots in coverage,” said Tom Gillis, senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s Networking and Advanced Security business group. “With VMware Carbon Black XDR, we’re advancing our leadership in lateral security for traditional and modern applications by enabling customers to inspect each endpoint, packet and process across their environment.”
The product is currently available to some customers as part of an early access program. But, with the growing popularity of XDR, VMware anticipates this type of solution will be the future of cybersecurity.
Improving Data Sovereignty, Without Compromising on Cloud Utility
Many companies have difficulty migrating workloads and data to the cloud due to government regulations about where data can be stored. VMware recently commissioned the Multi-Cloud Maturity Research Report by Vanson Bourne. It looked into data monetization and sovereignty. The study indicated that 96% of companies believe their multicloud approach has had a positive impact on profitability in the last 12 months. However, 95% of companies admitted that data sovereignty is a significant concern. With more than 100 countries employing regulations for data storage and management within their borders, these constantly changing laws will certainly impact company operations and the ability to monetize data.
To assist with this problem, VMware announced expansions to their VMware Sovereign Cloud, which now includes 25 global partners. The solution enables all the ecosystem partners to deliver the services found in a public cloud while ensuring data is secure and housed within the geographic area required to meet regulations.
The sovereign SaaS solutions are aligned with Gaia-X regulations and other international governing bodies. With the portfolio, ecosystem partners deliver SaaS solutions natively on sovereign cloud data centers. In this way, the cloud is completely disconnected from the public Internet, and all data remains inaccessible to anyone outside the country and provider.
“There is no data sovereignty without cloud sovereignty. And sovereignty does not have to come at the expense of cloud innovation,” said Rajeev Bhardwaj, vice president, cloud provider platform solutions, VMware. “With our new sovereign cloud innovations, we’re again setting the agenda by bringing SaaS services into sovereign environments. This will enable VMware Sovereign Cloud providers to help their customers innovate and drive digital transformation while reducing the risk of unlocking the value of data.”
As part of the announcement, VMware highlighted new SaaS, including VMware Tanzu on Sovereign Cloud. The portfolio includes Tanzu Kubernetes Grid for automated multi-cluster operations. Carvel-based tooling is also included for building, configuring and deploying applications to Kubernetes clusters. The Tanzu Application Platform can be used as part of the sovereign cloud to help development teams bring their applications to production faster and with improved security. The new version of the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid can now support Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, adding to its current support of AWS, Azure and vSphere.
Additionally, the VMware Data Solutions (previously Tanzu Data Services) is specifically designed for data management within the sovereign environment. Plus, Tanzu for Kubernetes Operations can optimize operations for any Kubernetes cluster at scale. So, Kubernetes can run on any cloud or at any edge to bring Kubernetes capabilities to any public cloud environment.
One of the most useful features shared during the announcement is the VMware Aria Operations Compliance solution. The solution is designed to provide continuous monitoring, reporting and remediation to ensure operations remain compliant with ever-changing government regulations. The tool can integrate with VMware Cloud Director so that one dashboard can automatically demonstrate compliance across the sovereign cloud infrastructure. At the moment, the solution is only available for sovereign clouds, but it could be useful for other cloud products in the future.
One last new feature for sovereign clouds is a new partnership with Caveonix. The partnership will integrate security, compliance and governance into a single platform within the sovereign domain. The solution specifically monitors security for compliance with sovereign cloud requirements. This is a handy tool for companies that need to ensure not only that their data is housed in a geographic location but also that it meets strict security and safety regulations. Industries such as healthcare and finance are most in need of these specific security features.
Solutions for the Hybrid Workforce
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many IT departments have been dealing with highly diversified work environments. Engineers are working in the office and from home, using more devices than ever, and accessing applications from across multiple clouds.
To meet the needs of these complex work environments, VMware also announced an expansion of their Anywhere Workspace platform. At the event, VMware highlighted their ideas for future “autonomous workspaces” and how they think their new solutions can align with that vision.
Digital Employee Experience (DEX) capabilities remain a top priority for companies looking to keep the at-home workforce engaged. The expansion of VMware’s DEX solution will allow more endpoint use cases and operating systems to make digital management easier.
VMware also announced that Horizon 8 virtual desktop users could use both on-premise and cloud deployments to connect to Horizon Cloud. The company describes the solution as a product that enables improved hybrid cloud experiences and operations. With this hybrid cloud strategy, engineers can also broaden the use cases virtual desktop environments can cover. Along with this announcement, VMware also announced the next generation of their Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure, which the company says decreases infrastructure costs by 70 percent and increases scalability by 150 percent. VMware also shared that Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure has now achieved FedRAMP High Authorization.
Azure VMware Solution Announces Major Expansions
One of the final big announcements from VMware Explore was an expansion of the partnership between VMware and Microsoft Azure. With the Azure VMware Solution, engineers can extend and migrate any existing VMware Private Clouds to be run natively on Microsoft Azure. The solution helps to accelerate migration to the cloud and improve the accessibility of hybrid cloud solutions.
One of the new preview features includes stretched clusters, which ensure that VMs and applications automatically failover to unaffected availability zones without impacting the workload or application. An ideal feature for any mission-critical applications that need guaranteed availability on Azure.
The other new preview feature is customer-managed keys, which improve security over mission-critical workloads and allow increased control over encrypted data. Essentially, engineers can use the Azure Key Vault to generate their own managed keys and to streamline the overall key management process for the Azure VMware solution.
The solution now features Azure native services as well to allow engineers to manage and protect VMs in a hybrid environment.
So, What’s Next?
With their suite of announcements, VMware looks to be vastly expanding their offerings to meet some of the biggest challenges in cloud computing. The company is really focusing on solutions that enable interoperable, secure multicloud IT environments and help companies navigate the complexity of data sovereignty.