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VMware prepping NSX-as-a-service running from the public cloud

VMworld content catalog lists live AWS services, Cross Cloud and OpenStack 4.0

The content catalog for VMware's VMworld 2017 gabfest has appeared and as usual offers a few hints about announcements at the show and the company's future plans.

Perhaps most interesting are the sessions pertaining to VMware's partnership with Amazon Web Services. One is titled “VMware NSXaaS - Secure Native Workloads in AWS”. The session description says “VMWare NSXaaS provides you the ability to manage Networking and Security policies in Public Cloud environments such as AWS.”

Once we saw that “NSXaaS” reference we quickly spotted job ads that say “VMware NSX Team is building an elite team of Devops/SRE engineers to run our crown jewel project “NSXaaS” on Public Cloud.” Whoever gets the gig will be “... responsible to run NSX as a Service Reliably with no down time. This will include proactively finding service reliability issues & resolving them as well as responding to customer tickets as a line of defense before involving development engineering.” Note the "such as AWS" in the session description, too, as it suggests NSXaaS won't be AWS-only.

Suffice to say, it looks like VMware's going to NSX-as-a-service, which is interesting!

Another session, “VMware Cloud on AWS - Getting Started Workshop” offers the chance to “Be among the first to see the new VMware on AWS solution. You will interact with the VMware Cloud interface to perform basic tasks and manage your public cloud capacity.” That description is similar to other AWS-related sessions in that it offers demos of actual services, which suggests to The Register's virtualization desk that come VMworld USA in late August VMware-on-AWS will either have been launched or be very close to a debut.

Session titles like “VMware Cross Cloud Services - Getting Started” suggest Cross Cloud will also debut at or before the show.

A session titled “VMware Integrated OpenStack 4.0: What’s New” suggests a new release is in the works, given that we're currently on version 3.1.

“VMware Cloud Foundation Futures” promises to show off “exciting new work being done using VCF as a platform in the areas of edge computing clusters, network function virtualisation, predictive analytics, and compliance.”

“Storage at Memory Speed: Finally, Nonvolatile Memory Is Here” looks like being VMware's explanation of how it will put byte-addressable non-volatile memory, which it calls “PMEM” and the rest of us call Optane and pals, to work. The session promises “an overview of VMware virtualization for PMEM that is now running on real PMEM products.” Speed improvements from PMEM aren't automatic, so it will be interesting to see what Virtzilla's come up with.

VMware's meat and potatoes – vSphere, vCenter and the like – don't look to have a lot new to discuss other than enhancements to PowerCLI and the vSphere HTML 5 client.

Desktop hypervisors usually get a VMworld refresh and the catalog mentions “innovations being added to VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation, and VMware Horizon FLEX” in a session titled “What's New with ...” the above-mentioned products.

There's no session description we could find that mentions VMware App Defence, the long-awaited security product The Register believes will emerge in Q3, but the catalog is sprinkled with mentions of endpoint security and VMware's willingness to make it better with virtualization.

VMworld Europe is in September this year, so it also fits the Q3 timeframe if VMware wanted to keep the announcement of its new security offering as the big news for its continental followers.

If you spot another session that hints at new products or directions, hit the comments! ®

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