VMware Makes its Hybrid Pitch
It's show time in San Francisco, where VMware is holding its annual VMworld conference and possibly stranding East Coast-based attendees through Labor Day weekend. There's a hurricane on the way, you know, and it might just soak the Eastern Seaboard this weekend.
With hurricanes, of course, come clouds -- or more appropriately, a big, swirling storm cloud with an eye in the center. Well, this week, all eyes were on VMware's cloud plans. (Oh, that was a terrible turn of phrase. But give us a break -- it's 95 degrees here in Greater Boston today, and we're not as air conditioning-equipped as some of you folks in other parts of the country are.)
At VMworld, the virtualization leader is making its hybrid pitch, more or less. vCloud Director, the company's new offering, is all about helping customers set up "internal clouds" (or Internet-based services that the customer itself hosts on-premises and delivers to users), as well as letting businesses know which tasks to run in an internal cloud and which to outsource completely to VMware or one of its hosting partners.
It sounds a bit like Microsoft's plans for the Windows Azure Platform Appliance, which will serve as sort of a set-top box of cloud applications. VMware is even beefing up its cloud efforts with a couple of acquisitions, specifically of Integrien and TriCipher.
What vCloud Director and the Azure appliance show is that the cloud that's moving into IT and the partner channel will be more of a steady farmer's rain than a hurricane. Hybrid, internal-external setups will rule for some time to come, and after making a considerable splash about the fully-outsourced cloud, big vendors are now settling into promoting the hybrid model.
That's pretty much what's going on in San Francisco this week. By the way, if you're at the show, or if you just really want to know what's going on there day by day, Rick Vanover has been blogging on-site for Virtualization Review. And, if you do get stuck in San Francisco this weekend, enjoy. We'll be swimming around the streets of our East Coast cities...maybe.
Have a thought about virtualization, VMware or Microsoft? Drop it to lpender@rcpmag.com.
Posted by Lee Pender on September 01, 2010 at 11:56 AM