VMware and Pivotal Launch Pivotal Container Service (PKS) and Collaborate with Google Cloud to Bring Kubernetes to Enterprise Customers

●      New Pivotal Container Service™ (PKS) Delivers a Simple Way to
Deploy and Operate Production-Ready Kubernetes on VMware vSphere® and
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

●      PKS Features Kubernetes Distribution Built on
Kubo, an Open Source Technology Created by Pivotal and Google Cloud, Addressing
the Need for a Flexible Container Experience On-Premises and in the Cloud

●      VMware Joins Pivotal and Google Cloud’s Kubo
Collaboration by Committing Significant R&D Resources

SINGAPORE, August 31,
2017 – At VMworld 2017, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) and Pivotal
Software, Inc., in collaboration with Google Cloud,
unveiled Pivotal Container Service™ (PKS), a new product that enables
enterprises and service providers to deliver production-ready Kubernetes on
VMware vSphere and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), with constant compatibility to Google Container Engine
(GKE). The new offering is expected to become available in calendar Q4 2017,
and ship as a standalone product able to integrate with Pivotal Cloud Foundry® (PCF)
and VMware’s software-defined data center (SDDC) infrastructure.

See VMware, Pivotal and Google Cloud executives unveil PKS
during the live
Webcast of the general session
on Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017 beginning at 9:00am Pacific from VMworld
2017 in Las Vegas.

Pivotal and VMware are applying their deep enterprise expertise
to launch PKS™, a commercial release of the open source Kubo technology, to help Global 2000 companies operationalize
Kubernetes. Software
teams that have decided on containers as their unit of deployment need a
reliable, scalable container orchestration platform like Kubernetes. PKS will
help operations teams deliver a hardened, maintainable container platform,
while giving developers on-demand access to a production-ready environment
featuring high availability, security, and multi-tenancy across private and
public clouds.

In November 2016, Pivotal and Google Cloud partnered on Kubo, a
joint engineering effort to bring the multi-cloud deployment capabilities of
Pivotal Cloud Foundry (via BOSH) to Kubernetes clusters—providing a uniform way
to instantiate, deploy, and manage highly-available Kubernetes clusters on any
cloud. As enterprises and developers agree upon on a common standard for managing
containers, VMware has teamed up with Pivotal and Google Cloud, and is
committing significant R&D resources to jointly develop Kubo and build
solutions on top of it that enhance the operational readiness of Kubernetes.

The initial release of PKS will feature Kubernetes via BOSH, VMware NSX®, and a jointly
developed version of Open Services Broker API that allows easy integration of
GCP services into PKS applications. PKS will feature cross-cloud security and
network connectivity including container network interface (CNI) compatible
services powered by NSX. PKS will be seamlessly integrated with VMware vSphere,
enabling customers to use VMware’s unified SDDC infrastructure for containers
and VMs.

Moreover, a critical benefit for enterprise
customers will be PKS’ constant compatibility to Google Container Engine (GKE),
which is continuously powered by the latest Kubernetes release and features a
fully managed experience backed by Google SRE (Site Reliability Engineering).
As a result, PKS’ constant compatibility with GKE will bring users the latest
container-native innovations in a secure and consistent environment. With PKS
and GKE, users will gain the workload portability, operational simplicity and
agility to speed business outcomes.

PKS customers will be able take advantage of deep integrations
with VMware infrastructure and management offerings for:

●      Enabling persistent storage for stateful
applications via the vSphere Cloud Provider, which provides access to vSphere
storage powered by VMware vSAN™ or traditional SAN and NAS storage,

●      Automation and governance for enterprises
via vRealize® Automation™ and provisioning of service provider
clouds with VMware vCloud Director®,

●      Monitoring and troubleshooting of virtual
infrastructure via VMware vRealize® Operations™, and

●      Metrics monitoring of containerized
applications via Wavefront® by VMware®.

PKS will include a jointly developed and maintained
implementation of Open Services Broker API and will be continuously compatible
with GKE. This will make it easy for PKS users to incorporate innovative GCP
services like BigQuery, Spanner, and Machine Learning in their applications,
and will provide fast and easy application portability between PKS and GKE.

Fully supported by Pivotal and VMware, PKS will be best suited
for large- to mid-sized enterprises as well as service providers. Pivotal and
VMware will both sell the product directly, via their respective channels, and
via the VMware Cloud Provider™ partner program. PKS will also be brought to
market by Dell EMC on VxRail Appliances and VxRack Systems, which offer a
foundation of proven hyper-converged infrastructure and data protection.

“Acquiring the technical capabilities and
the transformative culture associated with modern software companies is a
matter of competitive urgency for most enterprises. To adapt, organizations
need to provide their developers modern application development platforms to
enable them to ship code continuously,” says Rob Mee, CEO at Pivotal. “Pivotal
and VMware, in partnership with Google Cloud, bring you Pivotal Container
Service, a powerful new way to deploy and operate Kubernetes.”

“We see an open hybrid cloud
ecosystem forming based on many technologists and providers coming together on
Kubernetes, and Pivotal Container Service is a great way to run containers and
Kubernetes on premises,” says Sam Ramji, VP Product Management,
Developer Platforms, Google Cloud. “It
gives you native access to Google Cloud services, and it’s on the same release cadence as Google Container
Engine. With Pivotal Container Service plus Google Container Engine, you get
constant compatibility, and your services, and workloads are deployed the same
way, anywhere you need them.”

“VMware has partnered with Pivotal and Google,
industry leaders in the application development platform space, to deliver an
enterprise-ready Kubernetes solution integrated with VMware’s software-defined
data center infrastructure,” says Sanjay Poonen, Chief Operating Officer,
Customer Operations, VMware. “Pivotal Container Service is
purpose-built to deliver Kubernetes that is easy to deploy and operate, ready
for developer consumption, while addressing the operational needs of IT. This
new solution is unique in its ability to enable developers and IT to work as
one.”

“There is very high interest by enterprises today in
Kubernetes for container orchestration,” says Gary Chen, Research Manager, Software-Defined
Compute, IDC. “Pivotal Container Service’s focus on operationalizing
Kubernetes with built-in cluster deployment and lifecycle management, security
and network connectivity for containers via NSX and constant compatibility with
the latest release of Kubernetes and Google Container Engine, offers IT shops
plenty to consider. IDC research shows that most enterprises are seeking a
commercially supported Kubernetes solution and PKS has VMware, Pivotal and
Google lined up to support it.”

PKS is expected to become available in calendar Q4 2017. Pricing
details to be released upon general availability.

●      Go to the VMworld 2017
US Online Press Kit

●      Read VMware’s Blog
Post on the Launch of Pivotal Container Service

●      Introducing Pivotal
Container Service (PKS), The Simple Way to Bring Kubernetes to Enterprise
Customers

●      Read Google
Cloud’s blog post on Pivotal Container Service

●      Learn More About Pivotal Container
Service (PKS)

●      Connect with VMware on Twitter and Facebook

Pivotal’s Cloud-Native platform drives software innovation for many
of the world’s most admired brands. With millions of developers in communities
around the world, Pivotal technology touches billions of users every day. After
shaping the software development culture of Silicon Valley’s most valuable
companies for over a decade, today Pivotal leads a global technology movement
transforming how the world builds software.

About VMware
VMware, a global leader in cloud infrastructure and business
mobility, helps customers realize possibilities by accelerating their digital
transformation journeys. With VMware solutions, organizations are improving
business agility by modernizing data centers and integrating public clouds,
driving innovation with modern apps, creating exceptional experiences by
empowering the digital workspace, and safeguarding customer trust by
transforming security. With 2016 revenue of $7.09 billion, VMware is
headquartered in Palo Alto, CA and has over 500,000 customers and 75,000
partners worldwide.

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