Pender's Blog

Blog archive

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 [email protected].

Posted by Lee Pender on September 01, 2010


Featured

  • IBM Giving Orgs a Governance Lifeline in Agentic AI Era

    Nearly overnight, organizations are facing brand-new challenges caused by self-directed AI systems (a.k.a. agentic AI). Big Blue is extending them some help.

  • Microsoft Launches Integrated E-mail Security Ecosystem for Defender for Office 365

    Microsoft is expanding its e-mail security capabilities with the launch of a new Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES) ecosystem for Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

  • Microsoft Joins Workday's AI Agent Partner Network

    Microsoft has become a key partner in Workday's newly launched AI Agent Partner Network, aligning with other industry leaders to integrate AI agents into enterprise workforce systems.

  • LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky To Lead Microsoft's Productivity Initiatives

    In a strategic leadership realignment, Microsoft has appointed LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky to oversee its consumer and small business productivity software division, encompassing Microsoft 365, Teams and AI-driven tools like Copilot.