With 25 local partners now on board, VMware updates Tanzu and other products with data sovereignty compliance and monitoring features
VMware on Tuesday announced new solutions and cloud partners that it says will help guide customers through data sovereignty issues. The announcements include information about global providers specializing in data sovereignty issues, along with updates to core VMware products with sovereignty in mind. The announcements come during the first day of VMware Explore Europe, happening this week in Barcelona, Spain.
Data sovereignty is a top issue for VMware customers, the company said — organizations that fail to meet local regulatory requirements can be liable for fines costing hundreds of millions of dollars and will suffer brand damage otherwise, VMware said. “Today, 100+ countries have their own laws governing how data should be managed and stored within their sovereign borders, and most of these regulations are changing constantly,” the company added.
To that end, VMware explained that 25 global providers have now attained the status of “VMware Sovereign Cloud provider.” The company explained what that means: “VMware Sovereign Cloud partners offer key sovereign capabilities to nations to ensure that classified data is protected, compliant, and resident within the national territory and subject to the laws of that country. Being within a sovereign jurisdiction, sovereign clouds are exempt from foreign jurisdictional control and managed by national citizens with the relevant national security clearance offering a securely operated cloud infrastructure and cloud modernization service.”
Companies that have met VMware’s criteria include Communication Service Providers (CSPs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and data center operators in the U.K., Europe, Middle East and Asia. Companies of note include Tata Communications, TIM, Telefonica, NTT, Hitachi and NEC.
VMware noted that it’s building a portfolio of sovereign Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings. The sovereign SaaS instances operate in cloud data centers completely disconnected from the public internet, the company said.
“All data remains resident and exists only within a given sovereign region, with no access by foreign jurisdictions, no data or metadata leaves the country or provider,” said VMware.
These efforts start with Tanzu, VMware’s Kubernetes management portfolio. Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, the company’s enterprise-ready Kubernetes runtime, includes open-source components that offer monitoring and ingress capabilities, VMware said. And Tanzu Application Platform has added air-gapped installation to provide users with enhanced security and compliance in sovereign cloud environments. A new centralized vulnerability monitoring dashboard helps teams with pre-deployment security checks and secure app deployments.
VMware has also updated Aria Operations, formerly vRealize Operations, with an eye towards data sovereignty. Aria Operations provides a unified cloud operations platform with full-stack visibility for physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure and the apps they support. The Compliance Pack for sovereign clouds “provides continuous compliance monitoring, reporting, remediation, and automation capabilities that help partners remain compliant with both regulatory benchmarks and VMware Sovereign Cloud guidelines,” said VMware.
The company also noted collaborations with new partner services focused on data sovereignty, including risk and compliance management from Caveonix, and support for Cloudian Hyperstore from Tanzu Greenplum, VMware’s massively parallel processing data warehouse platform.
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