VMware today delivered on its promise to offer more flexible pricing and consumption models with the release of VMware Cloud Universal, a new subscription-based service that aims to simplify and accelerate the purchase and consumption of VMware multicloud infrastructure management services. 

As part of the announcement, the company also welcomed two new services to its multicloud portfolio to meet demand for a more integrated experience. The first is VMware Cloud Console, an end-to-end single monitoring and management tool that offers customers visibility and control of their entire VMware Cloud infrastructure regardless of where it’s deployed. 

And for customers looking to accelerate their application modernization initiatives, VMware now offers a new four-week service engagement called VMware App Navigator. The new service uses automated tooling and hands-on experimentation to assess and prioritize application transformation initiatives across enterprise applications based on the business value of each of those apps.

A recent VMware study noted that 63% of organizations state inconsistencies between clouds as one of the top “multicloud” challenges as the danger of recreating old IT silos in the digital era looms.

To aid in organizations multicloud efforts, Mark Lohmeyer, SVP and GM for VMware’s Cloud Platform business unit, said the VMware Cloud Universal was designed to enable customers with a hybrid cloud architecture to deploy a consistent infrastructure and operational model across on-premises environments. 

This latest cloud push from VMware comes weeks after the virtualization giant updated its multicloud management software with additional automation capabilities and “what if” planning for VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This helps customers predict demand and plan for future capacity needs across the hybrid cloud service.

VMware’s cloud management portfolio includes its CloudHealth and vRealize Cloud Management on-premises and software-as-a-service (SaaS) products.

The new service includes a VMware Cloud Foundation integration that can be used on-premises or though a customer managed environment. It can also be integrated into VMware Cloud on AWS, VMware Cloud on Dell EMC for VMware managed cloud environments, and on top of those platforms. It also features VMware’s vRealize Cloud Universal SaaS Multicloud management and operations platform and built-in Kubernetes support via the VMware Tanzu standard edition integration. 

Lohmeyer said there are four pillars to VMware Cloud Universal. The first is choice and flexibility of infrastructure deployments as it allows customers to purchase credits for branded multicloud infrastructure and management and apply these credits once upfront, and then consume any of the eligible subscription services offered at any time during the contract. Additionally, it allows customers to execute cloud migration initiatives over whatever time frame might make sense for their business. 

The second is cloud acceleration. The idea here, Lohmeyer said, is to lower the cost of entry for customers who might be migrating from existing VMware perpetual licenses to this new VMware Cloud portfolio of multicloud services.

Third is the ability to convert unused on-premises VMware Cloud Foundation subscriptions toward VMware Cloud on AWS or Dell EMC, or what the vendor called convertibility.

And finally, the new service includes an integration with VMware Success 360, the vendors adoption and success offering that provides personalized planning, design workshops, and support.

“Taken together, we think this really provides the industry's most flexible subscription environment, consumption environment for multicloud,” Lohmeyer said.