3V0-32.21 information source - Advanced Design VMware Cloud Management and Automation (VCAP-CMA) Updated: 2024

VMware's vFabric Application Management Suite is a new offering based on technology from the company's 2009 acquisition of SpringSource. One of its core components is vFabric AppDirector, which handles deployment of applications to cloud environments , according to Rob Smoot, director of product marketing for VMware’s vCenter management products.

"This allows you to assemble the applications with standardized templates and libraries and automate deployment into cloud environments," Smoot said in an interview.

A second component, vFabric Application Performance Manager, keeps tabs on applications to ensure they're functioning properly. While it's mostly focused on Spring and vFabric, the Application Management Suite also works with other development frameworks, said Smoot.

"This gives you a holistic view of the health of an application, from the code up to the business transactions going through it," Smoot said. "We're initially focused on vFabric environments, but our philosophy is open and extensible to other deployment environments."

Also new is IT Business Management Suite, which is based on technology gained from VMware's acquisition in June of Digital Fuel, an Israel-based SaaS vendor of IT services analytics technology.

This is important for VMware partners that are becoming more involved in cloud service brokerage, Smoot said. "They need a view of the service levels of the different vendors. IT used to do this manually with Excel, but we need more real time view of internal and external services in order to make strategic decisions about where to run applications," Smoot said.

VMware also released its first major update to vCenter Operations Suite, which launched in March and handles performance, capacity and configuration management in virtual and cloud environments running on VSphere.

Through deeper integration of VMware's capacity planning and configuration management technologies, Smoot said the updated vCenter Operations Management Suite can keep tabs on resource pools in private and public clouds while also monitoring any performance impact stemming from configuration changes.

Smoot said VMware now has more than 500 partners selling vCenter Operations Suite, and the simplicity of the product makes it ideal for partners that are looking to add management expertise. For small environments with between 50 and 100 virtual machines, vCenter Operation is deployed as a virtual appliance and can be up and running in minutes, said Smoot.

The Enterprise edition of vCenter Operations can bring in third party data sources, including management feeds and storage networking, Smoot said, adding that there's consulting work for the channel at the higher end in extending third party systems and customizing their customers' dashboards.

Cloud is effecting some significant changes to how infrastructure and apps are managed, and VMware's guiding management principle is to provide visibility across the entire IT stack, including private and public clouds.

"The ownership model is changing. IT used to own the full stack, but increasing some portions of the infrastructure may be managed by another provider," Smoot said. "We're trying to reinvent management for the cloud era, and we're automating everything in sight."

Their original disagreement has been displaced by a commitment to work on a solution together, says Simon Crosby, CTO of XenSource, the company that builds products around Xen virtualization software. The two are trying to come up with a common approach to virtualization support in the Linux kernel.

"With the help of IBM, we made a technology breakthrough that accommodates both," Crosby said in an interview Thursday. The two companies sat down together to work through the problem during the latest Linux Symposium, held in late July in Ottawa, Canada. Jack Lo, VMware's senior director of R&D, agrees. A group got together at the Symposium "to put together an interface to the Linux kernel. There's been a lot of activity" to reach agreement, he said.

The goal is to allow different hypervisors to manage Linux virtual machines generated by a competitor's software. Hypervisors are a second generation of virtualization software that provides a more efficient way of running virtual machines on a server.

Open-source Xen, first produced in research at Cambridge University, England, is a hypervisor, as is VMware's ESX Server. Microsoft is working on a hypervisor called Viridian, due in late 2007 or 2008.

Data center managers frequently turn to virtual machines to consolidate multiple servers on one piece of hardware. The strict software boundaries of virtual machines allow different and sometimes incompatible applications to run alongside each other on one piece of hardware, reducing the demand for new servers.

The work now under way would let hypervisors from Microsoft, VMware, and Xen work together in the same data center. Under such a scenario, it would be possible for a Xen virtual machine, trapped on a piece of failing hardware, to be automatically moved over to a VMware hypervisor on another piece of hardware.

The ability to manage failovers and do backups and recoveries would be enhanced if the Linux kernel were given one method of dealing with all hypervisors, said Carlos Montero-Luque, VP of Linux product management at Novell.

VMware and XenSource have different hypervisor designs and initially disagreed on how such a Linux kernel interface might be constructed. VMware has proposed what it calls a Virtual Machine Interface to the Linux kernel that works well with ESX Server. But Rusty Russell, a Linux kernel developer employed by IBM, "came up with a proposal in Ottawa that accommodates both Xen and ESX Server," said Crosby. Both VMware and XenSource are now collaborating on Russell's idea, called Paravirt_Ops, or paravirtual operations. The collaboration flies in the face of the alleged battling that was reported going on at the end of July. A few days after the Ottawa meeting, Greg Kroah-Hartman, a Linux kernel maintainer and employee of Novell Suse Labs, complained on July 26 of a lack of joint effort by XenSource and VMware on a combined approach to Linux virtualization support. Kroah-Hartman spoke at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference in Portland, Ore.

He couldn't be reached for further comment.

Asked if Novell agreed with Kroah-Hartman, Montero-Luque said Kroah-Hartman was speaking as an individual Linux developer, not as a Novell employee. Kroah-Hartman was followed by Oracle's Robert Shimp, who declared July 31 that Oracle "was losing patience over this issue and we are going to be pushing harder and harder on everybody to come to the table," according to reports in trade publications. Asked to comment by Information Week Wednesday, Shimp declined.

By then, posts on Slashdot by Anthony Liguori of the IBM Linux Technology Center indicated that "engineers from Xen and VMware have both been working surprisingly well on this," despite reports to the contrary. XenSource CTO Crosby said he added his own comments to Liguori's: "The VMware team should be praised for engaging in an open dialogue with the Linux kernel and Xen communities," he wrote.

InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips

Dividend reinvesting allows you to receive higher distributions in subsequent quarters and increase your compounding returns. Many investors continue to reinvest their dividend payments until they are ready to live off their dividends and wish to retire.

While you can choose from many dividend-paying stocks, some of them are better than others. Finding stocks that combine respectable yields with consistent rate appreciation can result in good long-term returns. Many corporations raise their dividends each year and continue to reward shareholders with buybacks. These are some of the top dividend stocks to consider for reinvestment plans.

Broadcom (AVGO)

Source: Sasima / Shutterstock.com

Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) looks like one of the best dividend stocks in the market. The company’s yield is close to 2% and it has been raising the dividend by over 10% each year. Broadcom regularly reports revenue and earnings growth while maintaining profit margins above 35%. 

The semiconductor giant stands to benefit greatly from artificial intelligence. Although Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) blew Broadcom away in stock gains, it’s been gaining considerable ground since the recent VMware acquisition.  

Broadcom shares have more than doubled in the last year and have soared by 342% over the past five years. Broadcom seems destined to become a trillion-dollar company and is about halfway there. Unlike other big tech companies, Broadcom offers a healthy dividend and has consistently hiked it higher over the years.

Shares currently trade at a 24 forward P/E ratio. The world’s reliance on chips and Broadcom’s synergies with VMware make it an enticing long-term pick for dividend investors seeking growth. 

Digital Realty Trust (DLR)

Source: dotshock / Shutterstock

Digital Realty Trust (NYSE:DLR) was previously flat for multiple years but has surged by 32% year-to-date. That’s still more than 20% removed from its all-time high which the stock can reclaim as data centers gain demand.

Digital Realty Trust has a portfolio of over 300 data centers in more than 50 metro areas. The company has over 5,000 customers that use its space for their IT architecture. Companies involved in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and information technology need to invest in data centers like the ones DLR provides.

The potency of data centers combined with the growth of artificial intelligence contributed to an 18% year-over-year revenue growth rate for the third quarter. The company has formed ventures with GI Partners, TPG Real Estate, and Brookfield Infrastructure among others to expand its portfolio. 

Digital Realty Trust has a healthy balance sheet which features almost twice as many total assets as total liabilities. The company’s dividend yield currently sits at 3.60%. 

IBM (IBM)

Source: shutterstock.com/LCV

Big Blue has been staging a comeback after several years of stagnancy for investors which included a lost decade depending on when you bought shares. Looking in the present, IBM (NYSE:IBM) has gained 16% year-to-date and is up by 52% over the past five years.

The turnaround is fueled by strategic acquisitions of companies like Red Hat along with artificial intelligence. Revenue only goes up by single digits while profit margins have been expanding nicely. The company reported 5% year-over-year revenue growth in the third quarter and more than doubled its net income. 

Although IBM has staged good growth in latest quarters, it is still a mature company. Investors get to enjoy a dividend yield above 4%, but dividend growth is minimal. In 2023, the company hiked its quarterly dividend from $1.65 per share to $1.66 per share. That’s less than a 1% year-over-year increase for the dividend, and IBM has been hiking the dividend by only $0.01 per share since 2020. 

Growing profits and top-line expansion can help the company raise its quarterly dividend by more than $0.01 per share each year. However, investors should view it as a blue-chip stock that offers more safety and a higher yield than other tech companies. 

Stag Industrial (STAG) 

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Stag Industrial (NYSE:STAG) has a real estate portfolio of warehouses and storage facilities. The company has 568 properties encompassing 112 million square feet in 41 states. The company has a star-studded list of clients that include Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), FedEx (NYSE:FDX) and XPO Logistics (NYSE:XPO) among others.

Investors get to enjoy a 3.75% dividend yield and monthly dividend distributions. While you can get monthly dividends by investing in enough companies, some stocks like STAG make it easy to receive frequent payouts. The company recently raised its monthly dividend from $0.121667 per share to $0.1225 per share. The annual dividend currently comes to $1.47 per share. Last year, it was at $1.46 per share.

Investors should approach Stag Industrial with the same dividend growth expectations as IBM. You won’t get much dividend growth but get a high yield from a stable company. Shares have gained 22% year-to-date and are up by 60% over the past five years. 

Microsoft (MSFT)

Source: The Art of Pics / Shutterstock.com

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has the lowest dividend yield out of the stocks on this list but it makes up for it in every other way. It’s easy to overlook the 0.80% dividend yield when shares have gained 57% year-to-date and are up by 275% over the past five years.

Microsoft got its start with personal computers but rapidly expanded into other markets, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, social media through LinkedIn, and gaming. AI Copilots has many investors excited as this artificial intelligence bot will enhance the experience for Microsoft Office products. The technology was enough for Daniel Ives to raise his price target to $450. That price hike implies a 19.7% upside.

Investors should monitor how the copyright infringement battle plays out between The New York Times (NYSE:NYT) and Microsoft over its artificial intelligence tools. Microsoft has endured legal battles in the past and has rewarded shareholders all the same.  

Oracle (ORCL)

Source: Jonathan Weiss / Shutterstock.com

Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) offers cloud applications and cloud infrastructure for businesses. The company’s technology helps corporations become more efficient, achieve lower costs and minimize the risk of cyberattacks. 

Oracle also offers advertising solutions, customer relationship management software, workforce management tools, and other resources. The company has a 1.50% dividend yield and recently hiked its quarterly dividend from $0.32 per share to $0.40 per share. It’s a 25% increase. Oracle currently has a dividend schedule that indicates one increase every two years.

Oracle posted $12.9 billion in revenue in the second quarter of fiscal 2024. It’s a 5% year-over-year improvement but growth in the company’s cloud segments indicates more promise. Cloud revenue makes up more than a third of the company’s total revenue and increased by 25% year-over-year. 

Cloud Infrastructure revenue was the biggest winner with 52% year-over-year growth. That segment makes up more than 10% of the company’s total revenue. During remarks about the earnings report, Oracle CEO Safra Catz expressed optimism about surging demand for cloud infrastructure and generative AI services. 

Cisco (CSCO)

Source: Valeriya Zankovych / Shutterstock.com

Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) is a mature big tech company that has a market cap of just over $200 billion. The company’s 15 P/E ratio offers reasonable safety compared to other stocks in the industry. Dividend investors get to enjoy a 3% dividend yield but the annual dividend growth rate is in the low single digits. 

Cisco stock is another case of taking a relatively low risk with limited upside for a respectable yield. The stock has gained 5% year-to-date and is up by 18% over the past five years. Cisco has been acquiring companies to bolster growth and tap into the cloud. The recent acquisition of Isovalent and the headline-grabbing acquisition of Splunk (NASDAQ:SPLK) indicate the company is exploring opportunities for growth.

Cloud computing presents an attractive growth opportunity and can help Cisco achieve enticing revenue and earnings growth in the future. Revenue growth is in the high single digits to low double digits while net income continues to expand rapidly. 

On this date of publication, Marc Guberti held long positions in AVGO and MSFT. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.

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Broadcom Inc. is accelerating a plan to strong-arm VMware customers into signing up for subscriptions by killing off older, on-premises perpetual licenses to use the popular virtualization software.

New customers will no longer be able to purchase a perpetual license, while existing customers will be prevented from acquiring support and software updates. In an blog post published over the weekend that was first spotted by The Stack, VMware Senior Vice President Krish Prasad stated that the initiative is part of a plan to “complete the transition of all VMware by Broadcom solutions to subscription licenses.”

In a short blog post earlier this year, VMware described its perpetual licenses as being among the “most renowned” in the software industry. When customers acquire a perpetual license, they gain a license key that enables them to access the associated software forever, since the key will never expire.

However, support and software updates are licensed separately and do expire, meaning that customers with a perpetual license will not be able to renew these essential aspects. So if they don’t switch to a subscription, they’ll no longer receive support or updates for VMware’s virtualization software.

VMware detailed a long list of products for which perpetual licenses are being discontinued, including VMware Cloud Foundation, vSphere, VMware vSAN, NSX, HCX, Site Recovery Manager, vCloud Suite, Aria Suite, Aria Universal, Aria Automation, Aria Operations, Aria Operations for Logs and Aria Operations for Networks.

In the blog post, VMware explained that customers can continue using their perpetual licenses with active support contracts. However, it also said it’s encouraging them to review their inventories of perpetual licenses, including the renewal and expiration dates of their support services.

Broadcom plots transformation

The move to end perpetual licenses comes shortly after Broadcom closed on its long-planned $69 billion acquisition of VMware last month. Since closing, the chipmaker has wasted no time in streamlining the company’s operations in an effort to make it more profitable.

For instance, just one day after, it announced it will be restructuring the company into four divisions that are each responsible for a different subset of its products. Then this month, it revealed that more than 1,800 employees would be laid off as part of a plan to boost the company’s profitability.

Broadcom has set itself a goal of doubling VMware’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to $8.5 billion within three years. As part of that effort, Broadcom will relocate its own headquarters from its current campus in San Jose to VMware’s 1.6 million-square-foot head office in Palo Alto.

VMware had announced it would be transitioning to a subscription model one year prior to the completion of its acquisition, justifying the decision by saying that the industry has already embraced subscriptions as the standard for cloud consumption. According to Prasad, the subscription model will bring customers benefits including continuous innovation, faster time to value, predictable investments and more. He added that the company will work with existing customers to “trade in” their perpetual products “in exchange for the new subscription products, with upgrade pricing incentives.”

One of those incentives involves VMware Cloud Foundation, which Broadcom has previously said will be the main focus of its investment strategy in the company. To sweeten the deal for customers who are reluctant to switch to subscriptions, it will reduce the list price of Cloud Foundation subscriptions by half, and introduce higher support service levels, offering “enhanced support for activating the solution and lifecycle management.”

An opportunity for VMware’s rivals?

Although the move isn’t unexpected, it’s likely to irk a number of VMware customers, which have been well catered to by the company’s buy-once and use-forever model. They’re now effectively being forced to switch to a “buy-never but pay-forever” model, and the move may push some to consider alternatives to VMware’s virtualization offerings.

“Of course, existing customers who have perpetual licenses will not be particularly keen on moving to subscriptions,” said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. “As usual with license changes, this opens the door to competitors. VMware will have to convince its customers of the benefits of its subscription model, with higher innovation and commercial elasticity.”

Several VMware rivals have stepped up their efforts to poach customers away from the company since Broadcom’s deal was announced. They include Nutanix Inc., which recently criticized the chipmaker, saying that its business model has always been to “maximize acquired assets in two to three years,” adding that VMware’s customers “will feel this.” Others argue that Nutanix’s solutions are also expensive, and say they comes with increased complexity. Even so, analysts say Nutanix has already enticed a number of VMware customers to its platform.

Alternatives for smaller companies include the open-source XCP-ng, Proxmox and Canonical Ltd.’s MicroCloud platform.

Image: VMware

Broadcom has moved forward with plans to transition VMware, a virtualization and cloud computing company, into a subscription-based business. As of December 11, it no longer sells perpetual licenses with VMware products. VMware, whose $61 billion acquisition by Broadcom closed in November, also announced on Monday that it will no longer sell support and subscription (SnS) for VMware products with perpetual licenses. Moving forward, VMware will only offer term licenses or subscriptions, according to its VMware blog post.

VMware customers with perpetual licenses and active support contracts can continue using them. VMware "will continue to provide support as defined in contractual commitments," Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager for VMware's Cloud Foundation Division, wrote. But when customers' SnS terms end, they won't have any support.

Broadcom hopes this will force customers into subscriptions, and it's offering "upgrade pricing incentives" that weren't detailed in the blog for customers who switch from perpetual licensing to a subscription.

These are the products affected, per Prasad's blog:

• VMware Aria Automation
• VMware Aria Suite
• VMware Aria Operations
• VMware Aria Operations for Logs
• VMware Aria Operations for Networks
• VMware Aria Universal
• VMware Cloud Foundation
• VMware HCX
• VMware NSX
• VMware Site Recovery Manager
• VMware vCloud Suite
• VMware vSAN
• VMware vSphere

Subscription-based future

Broadcom is looking to grow VMware's EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) from about $4.7 billion to about $8.5 billion in three years, largely through shifting the company's business model to subscriptions, Tom Krause, president of the Broadcom Software Group, said during a December 7 earnings call, per Forbes.

"This shift is the natural next step in our multi-year strategy to make it easier for customers to consume both our existing offerings and new innovations. VMware believes that a subscription model supports our customers with the innovation and flexibility they need as they undertake their digital transformations," VMware's blog said.

With changes effective immediately upon announcement, the news might sound abrupt. However, in May, soon after announcing its plans to acquire VMware, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan signaled a “rapid transition” to subscriptions.

At the time, Tan pointed to the importance of maintaining current VMware customers' happiness, as well as leveraging the VMware sales team already in place. However, after less than a month of the deal's close, reports point to concern among VMWare customers and partners.

Customer and partner concerns

VMware's blog said "the industry has already embraced subscription as the standard for cloud consumption." For years, software and even hardware vendors and investors have been pushing IT solution provider partners and customers toward recurring revenue models. However, VMware built much of its business on the perpetual license model. As noted by The Stack, VMware in February noted that perpetual licensing was the company's "most renowned model."

VMware's blog this week listed "continuous innovation" and "faster time to value" as customer benefits for subscription models but didn't detail how it came to those conclusions.

"Predictable investments" is also listed, but it's hard to imagine a more predictable expense than paying for something once and having supported access to it indefinitely (assuming you continue paying any support costs). Now, VMware and its partners will be left convincing customers that their finances can afford a new monthly expense for something they thought was paid for. For Broadcom, though, it's easier to see the benefits of turning VMware into more of a reliable and recurring revenue stream.

Additionally, Broadcom's layoffs of at least 2,837 VMware employees have brought uncertainty to the VMware brand. A CRN report in late November pointed to VMware partners hearing customer concern about potential price raises and a lack of support. C.R. Howdyshell, CEO of Advizex, which reportedly made $30 million in VMware-tied revenue in 2022, told the publication that partners and customers were experiencing "significant concern and chaos” around VMware sales. Another channel partner noted to CRN the layoff of a close VMware sales contact.

But Broadcom has made it clear that it wants to "complete the transition of all VMware by Broadcom solutions to subscription licenses," per Prasad's blog.

The company hopes to convince skeptical channel partners that they'll see the way, too. VMware, like many tech companies urging subscription models, pointed to "many partners" having success with subscription models already and "opportunity for partners to engage more strategically with customers and deliver higher-value services that drive customer success."

However, because there's no immediate customer benefit to the end of perpetual licenses, those impacted by VMware's change in business strategy have to assess how much they're willing to pay to access VMware products moving forward.

SAN ANTONIO, Dec. 12, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rackspace Technology^® (NASDAQ: RXT), a leading end-to-end hybrid, multicloud technology solutions company, today announced the launch of SDDC (Software Defined Data Center) Enterprise and Business for SAP with VMware virtualized compute, storage, networking, and cloud management. The single-tenant VMware solutions power mission-critical SAP and SAP HANA (High-performance Analytic Appliance) environments with fully integrated hardware and software stack for private cloud. The enterprise-grade solution and SAP-certified pre-configuration based on Dell VxRail is a turnkey experience ready to power innovation.

The Rackspace SDDC Enterprise and SDDC Business offer numerous add-on services ranging from VMware vRealize^® Suite, physical and virtual ops management, and Rackspace Data Protection to manage Disaster Recovery (DR) and VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) interconnect services. In addition, SDDC Enterprise and Business for SAP utilizes either shared, dedicated, or virtual storage area network (VSAN) based human-computer interaction (HCI) storage designed to meet the stringent requirements put forward by SAP for the latest SAP HANA database, including the current generation S/4 HANA release.

“SAP customers on SDDC will benefit from high levels of performance delivered by an SAP-certified solution that runs on dedicated hardware and the latest VMware software-defined networking and storage technologies and Rackspace Private Cloud,” said Kevin Carroll, General Manager of Rackspace's ERP Business. “The SDDC for SAP infrastructure solution leverages deep expertise and partnership service authorization with SAP to deliver flexible SAP certified solutions to run highly critical customer Enterprise workloads.”

The SDDC infrastructure solution extends Rackspace Private Virtual Cloud (PVC) product and solution offerings and now provides certified options for SAP customers with this solution. Rackspace’s ERP Application Services and 20+ years of SAP expertise can extend the core capabilities and services of SDDC for SAP to help customers architect, migrate, and manage their SAP applications.

• Designated SAP Service Authorized Partner: Offers customers consultants or systems integrators to provide strategic consulting, system design, solution integration and implementation of SAP solutions.
• Combines Rackspace certified capabilities to deliver SAP application, hosting, and infrastructure services.
• Leverages alliance partnerships with Dell and VMware to deliver the SDDC Enterprise and Business for SAP with VMware virtualized compute, storage, networking, and cloud management.
• Delivery of a configured solution productized to meet SAP certification requirements.

Click here for more information on SDDC Enterprise and Business for SAP with VMware.

About Rackspace Technology
Rackspace Technology is a leading end-to-end hybrid, multicloud technology services company. We design, build and operate our customers’ cloud environments across all major technology platforms, irrespective of technology stack or deployment model. We partner with our customers at every stage of their cloud journey, enabling them to modernize applications, build new products and adopt innovative technologies.

Media Contact: Natalie Silva, publicrelations@rackspace.com