VMware Cloud offerings plans take on AWS, and other Cloud Services
VMware is the market leader for virtualization, but Cloud is a forgotten name. The CEO famously stated that he was not concerned about public clouds running VMware, but that he is not concerned about public cloud. This makes perfect sense. AWS, the largest Public Cloud provider, uses Citrix Zen, not VMware. Xen is also used by a number of other Public Cloud providers like Linode and Rackspace. Google uses Kernel-based Virtual Machine for hypervisor, while Microsoft uses their own hyper-V. As you can see, none of the major Cloud players use VMware technology. This is a worrying sign for VMware. VMware plans to launch two Cloud services in order to compete with AWS and other Cloud providers.
VMware released a press release explaining their plan. The plan is to empower the VMware partners to create private/hybrid/public cloud using VMware products and to lure the vCloud users into using their Public Cloud offering.
The company discusses two concrete offerings in Cloud space:
1) VMware NSX
VMware announced that they will release VMware NSX, a network virtualization product. It will seamlessly integrate with VMware and other non-VMware hypervisors as well as cloud management systems. This will allow VMware clients to better manage their data centers. The press release did not contain any technical details so we will have to wait to see what this product looks like.
2) VMware vCloud(r), Hybrid Service
Many enterprises already use VMware vCloud in data centers. VMware plans to provide direct access to the VMware Public Cloud for these enterprises when they venture into the Public Cloud. It will be more like a Hybrid Cloud where both Public and Private Clouds can be used simultaneously. This reduces risk for companies and makes them more likely to choose the vCloud Hybrid Service over other Public Cloud services.
VMware’s challenge will be to integrate these Public Cloud services with the existing vCloud architecture. However, controls will be needed to allow for separate privacy and security settings depending on whether a virtual machine is launched locally or in Cloud Infrastructure. AWS/Azure/etc. should have easy-to-use controls. AWS/Azure/etc. have set high standards for ease-of-use. VMware is doing a great job, but there aren’t any technical details. This service is very exciting, and we are looking forward to its launch.
