{"id":649564,"date":"2013-03-29T13:33:46","date_gmt":"2013-03-29T17:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=625663"},"modified":"2013-03-29T13:33:46","modified_gmt":"2013-03-29T17:33:46","slug":"will-hybrid-public-cloud-give-vmware-its-mojo-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/649564","title":{"rendered":"Will \u201chybrid public\u201d cloud give VMware its mojo back?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It may be a cliche, but it’s also true: VMware is at a crossroads. The company, which dominates server virtualization in company data centers, continues to struggle for credibility in the cloud — and it’s new plans<\/a> for hybrid vCloud service<\/a>\u00a0hasn’t done much to fix that.<\/p>\n

\"VMware<\/a><\/p>\n

VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This “VMware vCloud Hybrid Service,” to be run from partner data centers and sold by VMware’s channel but managed by VMware, is slated to come online later this year. VMware pitches it as a way for the company’s 480,000 customers “to reap the benefits of the public cloud without changing their existing applications while using a common management, orchestration, networking and security model.”<\/p>\n

But VMware faces a raft of challenges.<\/p>\n

Too little too late?<\/h2>\n

First of all, many of those VMware customers have already tested out other cloud offerings — Amazon Web Services, or a third party service provider, MSP or hosting company, they’re already in the cloud in some way. AWS, for better or worse, has set the bar high when it comes to pay-as-you-go services for developers and higher-level managed services for other constituencies in the enterprise. Even solid VMware shops are testing out alternatives for different use cases, as we learned in last week’s big PayPal does\/doesn’t dump VMware for OpenStack<\/a> kerfuffle.<\/p>\n

Fractious partner relationships<\/h2>\n

Second, VMware’s existing cloud partners — including big service providers and telcos offer VMware’s vCloud Director as an option but several of those partners, speaking privately, aren’t wild about it. They say it’s under-featured and expensive. And, nearly all of them offer other — less costly — options to vCloud Director including OpenStack.<\/p>\n

The fact that VMware will pick certain service providers over others to host this cloud means it will tick off others.<\/p>\n

“Nearly all of the service providers were already hedging on vCloud Director because of cost issues and now all\u00a0those that weren’t\u00a0already hedging\u00a0are aggressively moving in that direction,” said\u00a0an exec with one vCloud Director partner who requested anonymity for obvious reasons.<\/p>\n

Forrester cloud analyst James Staten agreed that VMware stepped on “xSP” partner toes, but said it had no choice. \u00a0”None of its partners — not even the vCloud Data Center partners — \u00a0were really offering the full vCloud Director cloud experience as VMware views it. And it felt it needed to do this to really help educate buyers on the full capabilities of vCloud Director,” he said via email.<\/p>\n

The bigger problem, is that VMware is behind the curve when it comes to full pay-as-you-go cloud capabilities. And the claim that customers running vSphere internally and vCloud Director in the cloud get fully interoperable elastic cloud services across sites, \u00a0is, untrue, said Carl Brooks, \u00a0internet infrastructure services analyst at The 451 Group.<\/p>\n

“If you run vSphere in house and vCloud outside, you can get very basic capabilities — virtual storage and virtual servers– but that’s very little compared to what you get from any other hoster these days,” Brooks said. With vCloud director, “it’s like VMware is giving you a 1978 Pinto and saying it’s a Formula 1 car.”<\/p>\n

VMware would argue that the level and type of services that a third party service provider offers depends on the service provider itself, not on VMware, which supplies the software stack and tools. That’s one big reason that VMware will manage and run this new hybrid cloud, but proof will be in the pudding.<\/p>\n

And VMware’s biggest problem — the perception that its software is a proprietary and expensive — remains unchanged.<\/p>\n

Banking on the brand<\/h2>\n

But, VMware has its advantages. For one thing, there are all those customers. If it can stem defections to OpenStack or other cloud technologies and convince enterprise customers that its cloud is a more secure but also cost competitive alternative to AWS, it has a shot. VMware also spun off a bunch of projects to the Pivotal Initiative so it can better focus on its priorities — although Pivotal is also focusing on cloud initiatives.<\/p>\n

The problem there is AWS has a 7-year head start and rolls out new services (and price cuts) practically every week. And it’s getting more enterprise savvy<\/a>\u00a0and is showing more interest in co-existence with private clouds<\/a> preferred by regulation-constrained industries.<\/p>\n

OpenStack remains a wild card. VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger was careful to talk about the company’s commitment to heterogeneous environments when he outlined the new strategy. And, after all, VMware is a member of OpenStack <\/a>now, a development that caused a lot of head scratching. \u00a0One big reason for OpenStack momentum is that VMware’s rivals and enterprise customers alike have vested interest<\/a> in preventing VMware from parlaying its on-site virtualization dominance into the cloud.<\/p>\n

Staten maintains that VMware’s hybrid-public cloud is trying to be bold without being too bold.\u00a0”Any way you look at this, it seems like a half-hearted effort which means its likelihood of success is low,” Staten said.<\/p>\n

Feature photo courtesy of<\/a>\u00a0Flickr user\u00a0fontplaydotcom<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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