Containers and Kubernetes rule, which makes it unsurprising that they figure in a lot of recent announcements. In fact, VMware and HPE have both launched major initiatives that focus on the “dynamic duo of IT”. Both of them show why the combination is important, but they also show that it’s still possible to undershoot the opportunity. Both companies face the classic server/software dilemma, and that may be where both have gone just a bit astray.
HPE is one of the true server giants in the market, and like another (Dell) it’s better known for its personal computer products than servers. In HPE’s case that’s problematic because their PCs are actually made by their sibling company, HP, who also does their printer line. In any event, HPE has great IT credentials, but they’ve shared the general problem server vendors have, which is differentiation. Hardware, in the IT world, is something you run software on.
VMware is Dell’s partially captive software play. They were (and still are, though less so) the acknowledged giant in data center virtualization, and they also have a strong networking portfolio. They were an early adherent to the container-and-Kubernetes play, and it’s been my view for some time that they have the strongest product set to play in the future world of containers and the cloud. Their recent positioning, though, and even their recent M&A, has been a bit murky.
The challenge that both companies face is that enterprise computing means hybrid cloud computing. None of the enterprises I’ve talked or worked with have any interest in moving everything to the cloud. Most realize that their cloud computing activities will be primarily related to the front-end handling of mobile/web extensions of their core applications. Most are also interested in using SaaS for internal activities like CRM. However, data center IT focuses on marrying servers to software, and the cloud marries virtual machines to software. Containers make an interesting bridge because you can host them in VMs or on bare metal, and because cloud providers offer managed container services.
A bridge is still connected to the banks, of course, and for HPE and VMware/Dell, the “banks” are the current installed base of data center gear, and the emerging cloud-native world. All the action, the positioning and marketing opportunities, the editorial mentions, and so forth, are in cloud-native. Much of the money is still in data center iron. Both HPE and VMware/Dell have to stay a bit agnostic at one level, but not so much that they seem to have stuck their heads in the sand. IBM, after all, bought Red Hat, a software competitor in both data center and cloud, because they lost their broad appeal when they focused on mainframes in data centers.
The central element in the HPE announcement is Container Platform 5.0, which differs from other Kubernetes-based strategies in that it doesn’t require VMs in the data center. HPE says it’s resolved the “noisy neighbor” and security problems that can arise when containers are deployed directly on bare metal, problems that some users have gone to VM intermediary hosting to resolve. VMware, of course, is one of those companies, and it’s hard not to see the HPE move as anything but a swat at VMware’s strategy.
Positioning by counterpunching competitors’ positions is always a risk; they get to set the agenda. It’s a special risk in this case, though, and also a special opportunity at the same time. That’s because VMware’s offering, the fleshed-out Tanzu announcement, brings Kubernetes, VMware’s Pivotal acquisition, and vSphere all into the same picture. The result is a loss of focus in the way Tanzu is presented. HPE, counterpunching, could be drawn into unfocused positioning too, or it could take advantage of VMware’s muddle to gain some extra mindshare.
The big question for both “companies”, and for the industry as a whole, is just how to play “hybrid cloud”. For the next three years at least, the great majority of IT spending will be focused on core business applications and the data centers they run in. During those same three years, the great majority of CIO and development project focus will be on public cloud front-end technology. It’s the classic issue of “I’m putting five-thousand-dollar windows on a half-million-dollar house”; do you focus on the house (which isn’t what’s changing but that’s where the investment is), or the windows (which is what the buyer is actually doing)?
VMware has focused more on the house. Tanzu clearly provides a migration path for vSphere, and a credible future for the Pivotal Cloud Foundry stuff. It actually offers at least a credible cloud-native element, because Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native runtime platform. The problem is that the positioning sounds more like a migration strategy than an on-ramp for broader-market users. That’s problematic because vSphere isn’t the biggest source of hybrid cloud interest.
HPE seems to take on the vSphere-migration piece with their singular focus on containers on bare metal. I happen to think that this is really a better strategy, and one that’s better aligned with the broad hybrid cloud market opportunity, but it’s also one of those differentiating details that isn’t going to get a lot of media/management attention unless it’s impeccably packaged…which HPE didn’t do.
It seems to me that both companies started off by raising the Kubernetes flag, but both then forgot to salute. Hybrid containerized clouds are built on the presumption of some sort of effective federation of multiple Kubernetes domains, or they commit the user to deploying their own “in-house” Kubernetes on public IaaS services rather than on managed Kubernetes services. The federation piece, the notion of One Kubernetes to Rule them All, should have been critical in both announcements, and it was not.
Hybrid cloud really requires a unified model of deployment across all data center clusters and all public clouds in use. Google, with Anthos, and IBM with Kabanero, have approached this and perhaps achieved it. It’s certain that both will be putting together a story that’s complete and compelling. While Google’s enterprise position is relatively weak, IBM/Red Hat have a position that’s been strong and is growing stronger.
VMware has addressed this within Tanzu by, in a sense, broadening the definition of “service mesh”. Traditionally, service meshes are purely microservice virtualization fabrics, Istio and linkerd being the two main examples. These are based on sidecar technology and they offer microservice communications, discovery, and security built through the sidecars.
VMware emphasizes NSX, its SDN technology (acquired with Nicira) and Global Namespaces (GNS). It’s hard, given the fact that Tanzu is recent and Tanzu Service Mesh has only just been released for purchase, to know exactly what the limits of the approach are, but it seems to be able to connect not only microservices but also containers and VMs, and it seems to be reliant on deploying Kubernetes clusters in the cloud, rather than on using a form of cloud-provider managed Kubernetes services.
HPE takes a similar position; if you deploy HPE Container Platform in the cloud, then you can manage it seamlessly with your data center tools. There’s no specific federation support provided, and they also don’t make a specific reference to service mesh, though of course their Container Platform could be used with either Istio or linkerd.
Interestingly, nobody seems to be taking the true “high road”. Containers are a model of application development and deployment that can be adapted easily to both the public cloud and the data center. The container model is not prescriptive on “cloud-native” behavior; it works fine for monolithic applications too, as well as for the old-line SOA applications that rely on higher-level (bigger, more complex) services and stateful behaviors. Kubernetes and containers are thus a great operational framework, but we still need a development framework, an application architecture for the modern container-and-Kubernetes world. Microservices are not the universal answer.
That could work to VMware’s advantage, if they could position their NSX-mesh approach as a universal hybrid-cloud networking model. They’ve taken some baby steps in that direction, but it’s almost like they’re unwilling to make a virtual-networking story into a centerpiece of a cloud strategy. That’s odd because SD-WAN (which VMware has rolled into NSX via VeloCloud) is currently differentiated on its ability to support the connection of cloud-hosted components to a corporate VPN.
That point could be transformational in the SD-WAN space, not because vendors don’t currently support the cloud, but because most vendors don’t position their SD-WAN offerings as true virtual networks. I’ve noted in the past that SD-WAN is an application of a broader virtual-network position, and that ultimately that broad positioning was going to win the day. We may be approaching the time when that happens, particularly if VMware gets smart on its own NSX story.