At the VMware Explore 2023 conference this week, IBM announced that it will soon provide a fully managed service based on a streamlined edition of VMware Cloud.

Brendan Kinkade, vice president for independent software vendors, technology and hybrid cloud partnerships for IBM Global Sales, said VMware is now making available editions of VMware Cloud that are both easier to deploy and manage and, just as importantly, migrate between cloud platforms and on-premises environments as IT teams see fit.

IBM is committed to using that platform to deliver a managed VMware Cloud service that will span hybrid cloud computing environments aligned to an NIST-validated framework, he added. That approach is critical because it will enable IT teams to apply VMware license credits to any instance of VMware Cloud no matter where it is deployed, noted Kinkade.

In addition, the streamlined edition of VMware Cloud doesn’t use proprietary application programming interfaces (APIs) to make it simpler to port IT environments to another cloud service or back to an on-premises IT environment whenever necessary, he added.

At the foundation of the hybrid cloud service will be an instance of a multi-tenant vCloud Director console residing on the IBM Cloud. Through the console, IT teams will be able to work with IBM to co-manage application environments.

In addition, IBM is providing a managed IBM Cloud Cyber Recovery (ICCR) Service to better secure cloud computing environments.

It’s not clear how much of IT is now being consumed as a managed service, but the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly increased that number. Many IT organizations are also finding it simpler to rely on a managed services provider (MSP) to manage infrastructure so they can focus more of their time and effort on application development, noted Kinkade.

MSPs are also in a better position to aggregate all the telemetry data needed to train artificial intelligence (AI) models that will be used to automate workflows, he added.

Exactly how DevOps workflows will evolve as organizations rely more on external service providers to manage IT infrastructure is, naturally, a work in progress within many organizations. The main challenge is aligning a unique set of continuous delivery (CD) practices for deploying and updating applications with a provider that has already defined its own workflows.

Nevertheless, given the complexity of those environments, many organizations are not able to hire and retain the IT expertise required to manage it, so the only option may be to rely on an MSP.

Each IT organization will need to decide whether to rely on an MSP, given the total cost of a service. Many organizations often wind up having a mix of workloads managed by internal IT teams and external service providers. The one thing that is certain is that as the pace at which workloads are being deployed in the cloud increases, many internal IT teams are overwhelmed by a level of complexity that will only increase.