This article is more than 1 year old

Walking away from VirtuStream is the right thing for VMware to do

JV with EMC added no appreciable value to Virtzilla's cloud strategy

News that VMware has bailed from VirtuStream, the hybrid cloud joint venture it struck with EMC, should come as a relief to VMware users and those contemplating its cloudy offerings.

VMware knows it won't ever reach the scale of Amazon Web Services, Azure or Google's cloud. It instead positioned itself as hybrid cloud provider that understands all of your infrastructure intimately because it builds the on-premises and cloudy versions, thereby making it easier to build hybrid clouds. That VMware also offered one throat to choke when things wobble was also advanced as a strength, especially for customers operating in delicate regulatory environments.

The VirtuStream joint venture with EMC changed that proposition, inexplicably, but didn't offer a better alternative. VMware pulled apart its integrated model and asked its customers to work with a third party, with no immediately apparent benefit beyond those beloved by financial contortionists.

The Register's virtualisation desk therefore can't imagine customers liked, or understood, the change.

Nor, we imagine, did VMware.

VMware has one on-ramp to its cloud: vSphere. VMware's rivals have many more on-ramps. If you're a Windows Server user, it's entirely conceivable that you could use many Azure services long before you use Windows in hybrid cloud mode. Indeed, El Reg has been told by Microsoft staff that this is Redmond's plan: services like Azure Backup can give users a taste of Azure that, if found appetising, encourage wider adoption.

VMware does have cloudy backup and databases, but neither service operates at a scale or with sufficient sophistication or distinction to win users who aren't committed to vSphere. What VMware does have is the prospect of end-to-end vSphere from a single supplier, a cloud capable of running just about anything in a cloudy VM (we're told there are DOS 6.0 workloads in vCloud Air) plus a strategy to pipe in third-party services so that the decision to go with vCloud Air doesn't limit options.

None of which was improved by VirtuStream, which offered an alternative structure but not an alternative strategy.

vCloud Air isn't out of the woods by any means. The service is still tiny, in terms of users numbers and service breadth. Microsoft is charging hard: Azure will make Hyper-V look a better proposition for on-premises kit than it does today, thanks to more integration. AWS and Google will eventually get serious about hybrid cloud.

And VirtuStream? There's no reason it won't add value to VMware in other ways. Virtzilla's comms people tell us VirtuStream will “continue as an active member of VMware’s vCloud Air Network”, jargon for “offering hosted vSphere.” It may well be that VirtuStream finds a way to offer a nicely differentiated cloudy vSphere service that sends licence revenue to VMware and profits to Dell's bottom line.

If it does so, that's a win. But VMware was never able to explain how sending vCloud Air to VirtuStream was a good idea. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like