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VMware Extends Cloud Management Capabilities with vCloud Suite Updates

VMware unveiled an updated cloud management portfolio, including significant enhancements to the management products in the recently released VMware vCloud Suite.

VMware is also introducing a new product to the suite, VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1, and is updating the VMware IT Business Management Suite to further simplify and automate management while empowering IT to govern services across multiple, heterogeneous clouds.

VMware Cloud Management solutions help deliver the software-defined datacenter, allowing customers to achieve the efficiency and agility of cloud computing.

VMware’s approach to managing hybrid and heterogeneous clouds addresses three critical areas:

- Cloud Service Provisioning: Automate the provisioning and governance of infrastructure, applications and desktops as a service according to business and IT policies.

- Cloud Operations Management: Leverage analytics and intelligence to help ensure the performance, compliance and efficiency of cloud infrastructure.

- Cloud Business Management: Govern and manage cloud services as a critical element of running IT like a business.

VMware introduced significant advancements to the management components of the VMware vCloud Suite:

vCloud Automation Center 5.1 – Multi-Cloud Infrastructure and Desktop Provisioning

To help customers better govern the provisioning of IT services, VMware is introducing VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1, a new addition to the VMware vCloud Suite. Based on DynamicOps, which VMware acquired in July 2012, VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1 acts as a service governor, enabling policy-based provisioning across VMware-based private and public clouds, physical infrastructure, multiple hypervisors and Amazon Web Services.

Through a self-service portal – essentially a cross-cloud storefront – vCloud Automation Center will allow authorized administrators, developers or business users to request new IT services or manage existing resources.

VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1 will now be integrated with VMware vCloud Director to allow customers to leverage virtual datacenters comprised of VMware vCloud Suite’s software-defined services.

vCloud Automation Center 5.1 will also integrate with vCenter Orchestrator to automate IT process workflows across both VMware and customers’ existing management tools and processes.

vFabric Application Director 5.0 – Provision Applications on Any Cloud

vFabric Application Director standardizes and accelerates how customers model and deploy multi-tier applications to any cloud through easy-to-create blueprints with standardized, pre-approved OS and middleware components. While optimized for VMware vCloud Suite-based clouds, vFabric Application Director 5.0 will make it possible for customers to use the same blueprints to deploy applications across multiple virtual and hybrid cloud infrastructures, including Amazon EC2.

With this release, VMware will continue to expand vFabric Application Director application support to include all Microsoft packaged applications (Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint) as well as custom applications (Java,.Net, Ruby on Rails). VMware vFabric Application Director will also help simplify ongoing application maintenance tasks such as code and configuration, and it will support auto-scaling of applications in response to changing business needs.

vCenter Operations Management Suite™ 5.6 – Embedded, Integrated Cloud Operations Management

The vCenter Operations Management Suite applies patented analytics to integrated performance, capacity and configuration management, providing the intelligence customers need to proactively enable service levels in hybrid cloud environments. The VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite can double the operational savings customers receive from VMware vSphere. With this release, VMware will include the performance management capabilities of the VMware vCenter Operations Suite in all versions of VMware vSphere.

Enhancements to the VMware vCenter Operations Suite 5.6 continue to deliver on VMware’s strategy to converge management disciplines, incorporating new compliance views into the operations dashboard to help customers proactively enforce compliance with IT policies, security guidelines and regulatory requirements. New, customizable, group-based views will enable IT operations to more closely align with business priorities.

VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.6 will also include VMware vFabric Hyperic application-level monitoring to help customers proactively manage the health of business-critical applications, including Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, Windows OS as well as Oracle Database and custom Java applications.

vCloud Connector 2.0 – Hybrid Cloud Portability

VMware is introducing significant enhancements to VMware vCloud Connector, a bridge that enables customers to transfer VMs and applications across vSphere and vCloud Director private cloud environments as well as public clouds from VMware vCloud Service Providers.

vCloud Connector 2.0 will help make it possible to extend both networks and workload catalogs across hybrid cloud environments – in effect, extending the logical boundaries of the datacenter – without the need for reconfiguring networks or settings when moving workloads.

Also, distributed teams will be able to coordinate their development efforts by ensuring that everyone has a single, synchronized workload catalog that spans across the cloud environment.

VMware IT Business Management Suite 7.5 Enables Cloud Business Management

As the strategic importance of cloud computing grows, IT needs solutions to manage the business of cloud effectively by measuring the performance and cost across all cloud services – infrastructure, application and end-user computing.

The VMware IT Business Management Suite gives customers transparency into the cost, quality and value of cloud services, providing a business context for IT activities and enabling fact-based decisions aligned with business goals and ultimately transform to become a broker of IT services.

VMware is introducing VMware IT Business Management Suite 7.5 with a new IT benchmarking module that includes more than 3,500 metrics across 18 domains, allowing IT organizations to compare their performance with industry and functional peers.

VMware IT Business Management Suite 7.5 also includes enhancements to its IT Finance Manager capabilities that will further automate and streamline the budgeting process.

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According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

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VMware Extends Cloud Management Capabilities with vCloud Suite Updates

VMware unveiled an updated cloud management portfolio, including significant enhancements to the management products in the recently released VMware vCloud Suite.

VMware is also introducing a new product to the suite, VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1, and is updating the VMware IT Business Management Suite to further simplify and automate management while empowering IT to govern services across multiple, heterogeneous clouds.

VMware Cloud Management solutions help deliver the software-defined datacenter, allowing customers to achieve the efficiency and agility of cloud computing.

VMware’s approach to managing hybrid and heterogeneous clouds addresses three critical areas:

- Cloud Service Provisioning: Automate the provisioning and governance of infrastructure, applications and desktops as a service according to business and IT policies.

- Cloud Operations Management: Leverage analytics and intelligence to help ensure the performance, compliance and efficiency of cloud infrastructure.

- Cloud Business Management: Govern and manage cloud services as a critical element of running IT like a business.

VMware introduced significant advancements to the management components of the VMware vCloud Suite:

vCloud Automation Center 5.1 – Multi-Cloud Infrastructure and Desktop Provisioning

To help customers better govern the provisioning of IT services, VMware is introducing VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1, a new addition to the VMware vCloud Suite. Based on DynamicOps, which VMware acquired in July 2012, VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1 acts as a service governor, enabling policy-based provisioning across VMware-based private and public clouds, physical infrastructure, multiple hypervisors and Amazon Web Services.

Through a self-service portal – essentially a cross-cloud storefront – vCloud Automation Center will allow authorized administrators, developers or business users to request new IT services or manage existing resources.

VMware vCloud Automation Center 5.1 will now be integrated with VMware vCloud Director to allow customers to leverage virtual datacenters comprised of VMware vCloud Suite’s software-defined services.

vCloud Automation Center 5.1 will also integrate with vCenter Orchestrator to automate IT process workflows across both VMware and customers’ existing management tools and processes.

vFabric Application Director 5.0 – Provision Applications on Any Cloud

vFabric Application Director standardizes and accelerates how customers model and deploy multi-tier applications to any cloud through easy-to-create blueprints with standardized, pre-approved OS and middleware components. While optimized for VMware vCloud Suite-based clouds, vFabric Application Director 5.0 will make it possible for customers to use the same blueprints to deploy applications across multiple virtual and hybrid cloud infrastructures, including Amazon EC2.

With this release, VMware will continue to expand vFabric Application Director application support to include all Microsoft packaged applications (Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint) as well as custom applications (Java,.Net, Ruby on Rails). VMware vFabric Application Director will also help simplify ongoing application maintenance tasks such as code and configuration, and it will support auto-scaling of applications in response to changing business needs.

vCenter Operations Management Suite™ 5.6 – Embedded, Integrated Cloud Operations Management

The vCenter Operations Management Suite applies patented analytics to integrated performance, capacity and configuration management, providing the intelligence customers need to proactively enable service levels in hybrid cloud environments. The VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite can double the operational savings customers receive from VMware vSphere. With this release, VMware will include the performance management capabilities of the VMware vCenter Operations Suite in all versions of VMware vSphere.

Enhancements to the VMware vCenter Operations Suite 5.6 continue to deliver on VMware’s strategy to converge management disciplines, incorporating new compliance views into the operations dashboard to help customers proactively enforce compliance with IT policies, security guidelines and regulatory requirements. New, customizable, group-based views will enable IT operations to more closely align with business priorities.

VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite 5.6 will also include VMware vFabric Hyperic application-level monitoring to help customers proactively manage the health of business-critical applications, including Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, Windows OS as well as Oracle Database and custom Java applications.

vCloud Connector 2.0 – Hybrid Cloud Portability

VMware is introducing significant enhancements to VMware vCloud Connector, a bridge that enables customers to transfer VMs and applications across vSphere and vCloud Director private cloud environments as well as public clouds from VMware vCloud Service Providers.

vCloud Connector 2.0 will help make it possible to extend both networks and workload catalogs across hybrid cloud environments – in effect, extending the logical boundaries of the datacenter – without the need for reconfiguring networks or settings when moving workloads.

Also, distributed teams will be able to coordinate their development efforts by ensuring that everyone has a single, synchronized workload catalog that spans across the cloud environment.

VMware IT Business Management Suite 7.5 Enables Cloud Business Management

As the strategic importance of cloud computing grows, IT needs solutions to manage the business of cloud effectively by measuring the performance and cost across all cloud services – infrastructure, application and end-user computing.

The VMware IT Business Management Suite gives customers transparency into the cost, quality and value of cloud services, providing a business context for IT activities and enabling fact-based decisions aligned with business goals and ultimately transform to become a broker of IT services.

VMware is introducing VMware IT Business Management Suite 7.5 with a new IT benchmarking module that includes more than 3,500 metrics across 18 domains, allowing IT organizations to compare their performance with industry and functional peers.

VMware IT Business Management Suite 7.5 also includes enhancements to its IT Finance Manager capabilities that will further automate and streamline the budgeting process.

The Latest

As enterprises accelerate their cloud adoption strategies, CIOs are routinely exceeding their cloud budgets — a concern that's about to face additional pressure from an unexpected direction: uncertainty over semiconductor tariffs. The CIO Cloud Trends Survey & Report from Azul reveals the extent continued cloud investment despite cost overruns, and how organizations are attempting to bring spending under control ...

Image
Azul

According to Auvik's 2025 IT Trends Report, 60% of IT professionals feel at least moderately burned out on the job, with 43% stating that their workload is contributing to work stress. At the same time, many IT professionals are naming AI and machine learning as key areas they'd most like to upskill ...

Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

Image
Cloudbrink's Personal SASE services provide last-mile acceleration and reduction in latency

In MEAN TIME TO INSIGHT Episode 13, Shamus McGillicuddy, VP of Research, Network Infrastructure and Operations, at EMA discusses hybrid multi-cloud networking strategy ... 

In high-traffic environments, the sheer volume and unpredictable nature of network incidents can quickly overwhelm even the most skilled teams, hindering their ability to react swiftly and effectively, potentially impacting service availability and overall business performance. This is where closed-loop remediation comes into the picture: an IT management concept designed to address the escalating complexity of modern networks ...

In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

Image
Broadcom