The predictable barrage of product announcements arrived on cue at VMworld 2015 this morning, tracing out a line from the data center all the way to the public cloud, which witnessed the biggest update with the addition of two key managed services. The launch comes amid serious doubts over the future of the virtualization giant’s off-premise efforts.

It was only last week that rumor broke VMware Inc. has halted the development of new features for its public cloud, presumably due to a combination of slow adoption and the recent competitive friction with its parent company. There’s not much that the hypervisor maker can do about EMC Corp.’s strategy changes, but the new services could have some impact on the former issue.

Customers can now provision pre-implemented relational databases in VMware’s cloud and create remote backups of their virtual machines, functionality that exploits the native compatibility of the platform with on-premise environments running its management software. That interoperability received a major boost in conjunction with the release of a major update to the company’s network virtualization stack.

NSX 6.2 allows administrators to move their virtual machines across different locations, including distant data centers and VMware’s cloud, more easily in a way that retains activity records. The new traffic paths created as a result of such movements can be mapped out using a tool called Traceflow bundled into the release that VMware says makes it possible to create complete network topologies much faster.

The process of deciding exactly when and where a virtual machine should be moved is being automated too thanks to a new version of the vRealize Operations framework that provides placement recommendations based on various infrastructure requirements. An instance of appliance serving a user in a remote branch, for example, would be relegated to the facility closest to their office.

Administrators will be able to keep track of the virtual machines scattered throughout their private data centers and cloud deployments through the updated analysis component of vRealize, which has seen its capacity doubled to more than 15,000 messages per second as part of the launch. That enhancement extends the appeal of the framework to VMware’s largest customers, which have been forced to use other solutions so far.

That underscores the unifying goal of the updates: Provide organizations with the ability to assemble a complete hybrid cloud from the company’s solutions if they so desire. A homogenous environment offers a great many advantages, but they’re being increasingly outweighed by demand for freedom of choice, which is why VMware is also launching a new version of its OpenStack distribution at the conference.

The distribution incorporates the improvements introduced in the Kilo release of the project that was rolled out earlier this year and targets hosting partners. The idea is to provide customers a simply way try out OpenStack and familiarize their developers with the platform that doesn’t require setting up a cluster from scratch.

Photo via VMware