VMware’s vision of those last years it’s almost clear and it’s all around the three main pillars: SDDC, Hybrid Cloud and EUC.
In order to provide the Software Defined DataCenter, VMware has work a lot on the cloud related aspects, but also for the SDN and SDS technologies to enable a VM policies driven approach. VMware NSX is the clear answer on the SDN part, but what about the SDS part?
The SDS vision of VMware is finally clear and possible with vSphere 6.0 that brings both Virtual SAN (introducted for the first time in vSphere 5.5 U1) and the new Virtual Volumes (or VVols):
Both are VMware techonologies, but Virtual SAN is also a storage solution (hyperconverged storage, hybrid or full flash) and Virtual Volumes are simple an enabler to make other storage more SDS like and all VM policy driven.
But in both cases the ecosystem is still present and necessary.
For Virtual SAN, VMware is not an hardware vendor, so somebody must provide a solution: from scratch, already VSAN ready, or using the EVO:RAIL (and EVO:RACK) approach… but in any case will be an hardware vendor.
For Virtual Volumes other storage must be used, so there is a lot of space for storage vendor or also software vendor with SDS solutions.
But the ecosystem is also present for 3rd part storage integration or simple by partnership on specific user cases. For example: