VMware unlocks power of Kubernetes, App Modernization for Southeast Asia’s Innovation Economy

VMware, a leading innovator in enterprise software, today announced new offerings to help customers further accelerate their app and infrastructure modernization initiatives. VMware vSphere 7 Update 1, VMware vSAN 7 Update 1 and VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1 product releases help streamline customer adoption of Kubernetes and support stateful applications with new developer-ready capabilities and enhance scalability and operations with new features. The introduction of VMware Tanzu editions – each of which packages capabilities of the Tanzu portfolio into a solution that directly addresses a single, common customer challenge – along with skills training and development initiatives will further enable businesses in the region to embrace the full potential of modern apps and help businesses to respond, adapt and accelerate business growth amidst macroeconomic uncertainties.

The pace of business innovation has emerged as a critical success factor for sustained growth in Southeast Asia as organizations grapple with the impacts from COVID-19 – uncertain market conditions and the unprecedented shift to a distributed and digitalized business and work environment. Recent research from VMware showed that APAC organizations that adopted a software-led transformation approach were better positioned to weather the impact of business downturns due to their improved delivery of modern applications.1 The study also showed that higher growth APAC companies are spending more time on innovation than their lower performing counterparts (49% vs. 44%), with a greater proportion of agile steps in the app development process (58% vs 46%).

“As organizations continue to adapt their business and operational models to the fast-changing economic environment in Southeast Asia, those that are able to continuously innovate faster and more securely can  achieve more impactful business outcomes, enabling them compete more effectively,” said Kip Cole, VP, Tanzu Asia Pacific & Japan. “With one of the industry’s most comprehensive software stack for modern apps, VMware empowers enterprises with greater agility and time-to-market, delivering hyper-personalized experiences to customers as they build, run, manage, connect and protect their apps across any cloud and any device.”

Delivering Developer-Ready Infrastructure

At VMworld 2019 US, VMware unveiled the Tanzu portfolio and the tech preview of Project Pacific—to rearchitect vSphere into an open platform using Kubernetes APIs. In a year’s time, VMware has delivered a comprehensive software stack that enables customers to modernize existing applications and infrastructure and develop new, modern applications.

The next phase of Project Pacific with new product releases will help customers rapidly adopt Kubernetes. VMware vSphere with Tanzu will provide a simple way for hundreds of thousands of vSphere customers globally to get started with Kubernetes and modernize the 70 million-plus workloads running on vSphere.

Progressing Asia’s developer ecosystem 

As part of its commitment to level-up Asia’s innovation ecosystem, VMware is announcing its Getting Future Ready initiative, a pilot training initiative that deepens expertise and specialization in next-generation technologies for the Singapore workforce. Getting Future Ready provides a structured programme that upskills and prepares tech talents for emerging Cloud Native job roles and opportunities.

Offering up to 1,000 traineeship opportunities to Singapore-based companies, Getting Future Ready will benefit tech talents across VMware’s expansive partner and customer ecosystem that include organizations such as DBS Bank and M1. 

“The vibrancy and strength of Singapore’s innovation economy, along with its deep pool of tech talent, serve as a powerful testament to the country’s Smart Nation ambitions,” said Adrian Hia, Country Manager, VMware Singapore. “As organizations continue to adapt, respond and accelerate their businesses in this new digital paradigm, VMware is committed to leveraging our industry-leading technologies and expertise to upskill and enable a new generation of tech talents, so they can drive Singapore’s economy forward in its next chapter of growth.”

Showcasing industry best practices to strengthen Southeast Asia’s future-readiness

Customer Quotes

“As the world’s best digital bank, DBS’ aspiration is to be a tech company that happens to provide financial services. That ambition requires significant investment in the latest technology solutions. In the course of our journey, we have found that VMware provides us with two attractive value propositions. One is helping us to solve the challenge of managing large containers and Kubernetes at scale, with technologies like vSphere 7 with Kubernetes and VMware Tanzu Mission Control and the second is the ​modern application development expertise that we get with VMware Tanzu and Pivotal Labs. Both of those matter to us as we are constantly investing in our cloud infrastructure and rearchitecting our applications to be even more cloud-ready so that we can stay one step ahead of our customers,” said Jimmy Ng, Chief Information Officer, DBS.

“As the enabler of Digital Malaysia, we continuously innovate to better serve the nation. Towards this end, we always explore ways to continue providing robust cloud infrastructure for our business needs. With VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated, it further facilitates in addressing the fast-changing requirements of digital journey with ease,” said Umapathy Sivan, Chief Information Officer, Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM).