VMware plussed its stalwart vSphere and vSAN products to help enterprises manage those platforms in on-premises or private cloud environments and to generate a regular source of income for the vendor. The updates also come under the shadow of VMware’s pending acquisition by Broadcom.

The update adds “+” designations to both platforms. That symbol injects a new control plane that allows enterprises to manage applications running on-premises or in a private cloud environment.

vSphere is VMware’s signature multicloud platform, while vSAN is VMware’s hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software. The new iterations provide a single point of control over provisioning on-premises workloads for virtual machines (VMs) and containers orchestrated by Kubernetes.

Weiguo He, senior director of product marketing at VMware, explained that to activate the platforms, customers deploy a cloud gateway on-premises into their vCenter environment and connect that gateway with the VMware Cloud Console that they might already be using to manage their other VMware cloud products. They then register that vCenter in the Cloud Console to convert to the service’s subscription billing process, which advances VMware’s subscription and software-as-a-service (SaaS) goals.

Users can manage both platforms through the VMware Cloud Console, which provides a central point of control for inventory, configuration, alerts, administration, and security status for on-premises deployments. It also supports the provisioning of virtual machines (VMs) to any vSphere cluster or existing vSAN data store.

The platform also taps into VMware’s Kubernetes-focused Tanzu Standard product to help manage and run container-based applications on-premises, in a public cloud, or at an edge location. It uses Tanzu Mission Control Essentials to provide global visibility and automate operational tasks across an enterprise’s Kubernetes deployment.

He said that customers gain “centralized cloud management through the Cloud Console and receive hybrid cloud services like fully customer-managed admin services and developer services, as well as add-on services such as disaster recovery and ransomware protection that is VMware managed.”

Those last two features were part of a product launch earlier this year.

However, He also clarified that while the Cloud Console provides a “unified global management plane in the cloud that offers all these additional capabilities and value, it does not replace vCenter, the local management plane that remains on-prem and customers can continue using it.”

Mark Loymeyer, SVP and GM at VMware, further explained that this update is targeted at enterprises that want to maintain tight control over their assets while leaving their long-term hosting options open. He noted that many customers have mission-critical and already optimized enterprise workloads running in private or edge deployments, but now want to bring some public cloud benefits and optionality to those deployments.

“So you can sort of think about this as becoming a platform by which we connect those existing deployments into this broader multicloud architecture, and then from there we give customers a lot of choice and flexibility for wherever they want to go in the future,” Lohmeyer said.

The newly plussed products are set for general availability before July 29, which is the middle of VMware’s current fiscal year. That would get them to market just ahead of CEO Raghu Raghuram’s previous launch guidance.

Pricing and contract stipulations are also still being fleshed out, though customers will have to change to a subscription SaaS licensing model.

The updates also build on VMware’s Project Arctic that the vendor launched last year. That project was launched as a way to extend cloud benefits to on-premises workloads while also providing enterprises with a path toward migrating those workloads to the cloud. Basically, extending VMware’s VM products to work seamlessly between on-premises environment and the cloud.

The VMware updates come under the shadow of chip giant Broadcom putting in a $69 billion offer to acquire VMware. That deal has received a decidedly mixed reception from industry analysts that have questioned what impact Broadcom’s typical margin focus will have on VMware’s need to innovate.

“As with past acquisitions, Broadcom’s primary goal will be to improve profitability through cost synergies, mostly related to redundant headcount,” Technology Business Research Senior Analyst Catie Merrill wrote in a recent research note. “While margins will certainly benefit, VMware’s innovative agenda … hangs in the balance, with the outcome dependent upon Broadcom’s desire to drive synergies with VMware in both R&D and go to market.”