VMware and Equinix combine cloud with bare metal in new distributed service

Equinix and VMware have announced VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal, a new distributed cloud service that combines VMware’s cloud infrastructure-as-a-service with Equinix’s Bare Metal-as-a-service.

The offering has been designed to extend customers’ cloud environments into distributed metro locations to meet business-critical demands at the edge, while also enabling them to preserve the integrity of enterprise workloads.

VMware Cloud on Equinix Metal targets distributed cloud use cases, including smart cities, video analytics, game development, real-time financial market trading, retail POS, as well as various IoT and ML/Inference uses.

The service combines VMware Cloud’s multi-cloud infrastructure and Equinix Metal, an automated bare metal and interconnection offering that is delivered as-a-service across Equinix’s global International Business Exchange (IBX) footprint. Users will gain private, low-latency access to both private and public cloud services - as well as thousands of IT and network providers - via Equinix Fabric interconnection.

“We are pleased to partner with VMware to provide an on-demand, dedicated cloud infrastructure solution that can be deployed globally,” said Zachary Smith, global head of Edge Infrastructure Services at Equinix. “Customers benefit from secure connections to their critical private or on-prem environments and also to the thousands of clouds, networks and other ecosystem participants that come together at Equinix.”

The collaboration builds on Equinix and VMware’s existing long-standing relationship, which has seen the pair deliver multi-cloud infrastructure solutions together for almost a decade.

Narayan Bharadwaj, vice president of Cloud Solutions at VMware, said businesses across industries are now “seeking to become cloud smart by matching enterprise application needs to the best cloud environments”.

“This approach will enable them to benefit from high performance and consistent infrastructure with low TCO,” he explained. “VMware and Equinix are uniquely positioned to co-innovate on a distributed cloud service that extends VMware Cloud to new locations to provide application choice and flexibility and accelerate cloud transformation for all enterprises.”

Dave McCarthy, research vice president of Cloud and Edge Infrastructure Services at IDC, said customers have so far lacked a suitable cloud option that combines on-premises security and control with high performance, data locality, and low overall TCO.

“For mission-critical applications that rely on low latency and high-performance network bandwidth, the default has been to retain workloads on-premises or perform real-time needs, such as data processing, at branch office or metro locations,” he said.

“With their combined strengths, Equinix and VMware are well positioned to deliver a distributed cloud service that will address the demands of enterprise applications where latency, performance, security, and data locality are key drivers.”

Customers will be able to purchase the VMware Cloud software as a service from VMware, and the Bare Metal as a Service capacity from Equinix.