Vodafone and IBM Join Together to Offer Easy Route to Cloud for Enterprises

Through a new agreement with IBM (NYSE: IBM), Vodafone announced today that it is offering an international service that enables enterprises to support the movement of VMware-based workloads on a Vodafone Hosted Private Cloud to and from the IBM Cloud.  The new service means Vodafone customers can more easily and quickly deploy and move VMware-based workloads with confidence, speed and scale globally, while supporting growing data residency needs.

Working with IBM, Vodafone is helping its clients tackle one of the most pressing IT challenges for enterprises; moving existing VMware workloads from on premises environments to the cloud without incurring the cost and risk associated with re-tooling operations, re-architecting applications and re-designing security policies.

With over half a million enterprises running an estimated 50 million workloads, enterprises need fast, easy and cost effective ways to deploy and move VMware workloads between on-premises and cloud environments and across geographic boundaries.

The IBM Cloud capability helps clients meet this growing demand by extending the global footprint of Vodafone’s Hosted Private Cloud service and helping establish a new hybrid cloud offering for enterprises.  This new service is designed to help Vodafone enterprise customers reduce latency by locating applications closer to users while maintaining data within a security-rich global network.

In utilising VMware NSX network virtualisation across Vodafone’s global network, a single virtual data centre based on VMware was created to bridge between the Vodafone Hosted Private Cloud and the IBM Cloud. This enables enterprises to establish true application portability and burst capability across a geographically diverse data centre footprint using a single management portal.

The Vodafone Hosted Private Cloud solution and the IBM Cloud offers a number of advantages including:

• With Vodafone’s and IBM’s expertise, solutions and cloud infrastructure enterprises can quickly manage and scale their workloads utilising the VMware cloud software, processes and APIs with which they are already familiar.
• The Vodafone network and Hosted Private Cloud capabilities will allow customers to rapidly provision new or scale existing workloads across 19 countries as a result of the combined Vodafone and IBM cloud data centre footprint.
• Enterprises requiring compliance and data residency regulation are able to move workloads easily to the appropriate geography and are able to have greater flexibility to respond to changes as needs evolve.
• As well as benefitting from flexible, consumption based pricing models, access to professional services, enterprises can also access the combined possibilities of Vodafone connectivity and IoT capabilities.
• Enable Vodafone customers to tap into IBM’s hybrid cloud capabilities and relationship with VMware to expand on the value from their existing investments while giving them on-demand, scalable access to infrastructure and services, including higher value IBM services like Watson.

Responding to the announcement, Ajay Patel, senior vice president, Product Development, Cloud Services, VMware said, “VMware is pleased to see Vodafone and IBM partner to empower our mutual customers to innovate across clouds using VMware Cloud Infrastructure. This new offering from Vodafone and IBM will enable businesses to utilize a globally consistent, common operating model for running, managing and securing their workloads across clouds.”

Vodafone director of Cloud and Hosting Services Greg Hyttenrauch said, “IBM is an excellent partner for Vodafone.  The combination of our network and our VMware based Hosted Private Cloud with the global reach of IBM’s capabilities gives customers more flexibility, more choice and the possibility of a true hybrid cloud.  There is no doubt in my mind that we are starting out on a long and fruitful relationship.”

Sebastian Krause general manager IBM Cloud Europe added, “The IBM Cloud is bringing expanded capabilities to Vodafone by providing its customers with quick and easy access to a variety of higher value services across a broader geographical footprint than ever before. Through this collaboration, we are further helping enterprises take advantage of the opportunity and value of cloud.”