VMware Unveils Virtual Datacenter and VCloud

Today at VMworld Europe 2009, Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer of VMware, Inc. outlined a comprehensive strategy and technology roadmap that will help enable companies to achieve the benefits of cloud computing internally, and bridge to external clouds through a private cloud. This strategy is aimed at a more modern approach to delivering IT as a service, achieving the maximum efficiency and flexibility for businesses. Building on announcements from VMworld Las Vegas 2008, today at the second-annual VMworld Europe 2009 in Cannes, Maritz discussed and demonstrated three key enabling components for building a private cloud: the complete virtualization of the datacenter through a Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS), the extensions of the VDC-OS and the management layer to enable service providers to deliver external clouds and federate with internal clouds, and the evolving technologies for desktop virtualization to tie all elements of IT as a service together.

VMwares focus is on enabling our customers to run their datacenters as internal clouds and operate in a far more flexible and cost-efficient way, said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, VMware. Our customers want the plumbing to disappear in the datacenter, on the desktop and in the cloud so they can focus their staff time and IT budget on delivering business value. They want cloud-like services so they can act as hosting providers to their internal customers. Our Virtual Datacenter Operating System Initiative will accelerate customers down the virtualization path so that they can run their IT as an internal cloud service. The VMware vSphere generation of products, which are currently in development, will be a new class of software that delivers on this strategy. And, as customers become cloud-enabled, they will have the flexibility to securely and efficiently expand their internal clouds to tap the resources offered by external service providers through our VMware vCloud Initiative. I am excited to share the progress weve made on our initiatives at VMworld Europe.

A private cloud is a secure computing environment that allows computing capacity from both internal and external clouds to interoperate and be delivered much like a utility. A private cloud brings unprecedented levels of flexibility, control, efficiency, resiliency, and manageability to datacenters and allows any application legacy, server-based, desktop or those built on new application frameworks to be delivered as a service.

The private cloud brings the benefits of cloud computing under the control of corporate IT, such as:

* Improved efficiencies through maximum resource utilization of all server, storage and network resources
* Better resiliency through capacity or fail-over capabilities that are dynamic or on-demand
* Improved accountability by leveraging a usage-based, pay-as-you-go service model
* Better quality through standardized auditable and automatically ensured service levels
* More flexibility through a future-proof platform that supports existing and future applications that require no re-writes or modification to run in the cloud

VMware is helping make the promise of a self-service datacenter a reality through the VDC-OS and VMware vCloud Initiatives, said Mark Bowker, analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group. VMware, as a leader in the industry, has the ability to provide the building blocks, create standards, and shape the future of cloud computing. VMware is in a unique position, with its depth and breadth of mature solutions, to help customers build their first iterations of central compute clusters and lead the federation between internal and external computing resources. VMware has demonstrated success with a rich ecosystem of partners that are now anxious to work with the company to build and deliver cloud computing solutions.

VMware vCloud API to Enable Interoperability Across Clouds
A core enabler of the VMware vCloud Initiatives broad application and service provider interoperability is the VMware vCloud API, which allows programmatic access to private cloud resources and support the delivery of services and applications that leverage and extend private clouds. The VMware vCloud API is in private release and under co-development with partners. At VMworld Europe 2009, software companies such as Engine Yard and IT Structures will demonstrate new services built on top of the VMware vCloud API which further enable scalable, elastic, portable infrastructure for Web 2.0 and enterprise application stacks.

"As a leading Ruby on Rails platform for the cloud, we're excited to be working with VMware to support its vCloud API," said Tom Mornini, CTO Engine Yard. The vCloud API is exciting because it will allow our enterprise customers to choose between internal and external cloud resources more easily, and is backed by VMware, a trusted vendor.

VMware is committed to open interoperability between cloud services, and is working with many industry partners to advance standards for cloud computing. As one of the original authors of the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard now released from the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), VMware will build upon that work by submitting a draft of its VMware vCloud API to enable consistent mobility, provisioning, management, and service assurance of applications running in internal and external clouds.