VMware CEO and president Paul Maritz yesterday made two significant announcements at the second VMworld Europe conference, currently under way in Cannes.
IT, Maritz says, has backed itself into a corner where the bulk of its energy is spent on "the plumbing and keeping the lights on" and not on innovation and competitive differentiation.
VMware aims to change this through the release of three components outlined today at the conference. These form part of a broader strategy and technology roadmap aimed at enabling IT to be run as a service and are the three key enabling components for building a private cloud.
The first, as per a statement released by the company, is complete virtualisation of the data centre through a Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS). The second is the extensions of the VDC-OS and the management layer to enable service providers to deliver external clouds and federate with internal clouds. The third involves evolving technologies for desktop virtualisation to tie all elements of IT as a service together.
"The three initiatives are designed to get us closer to the point where we can deliver IT as a service with efficiency, control and choice," he states.
Says Maritz: “VMware's focus is on enabling our customers to run their data centres as internal clouds and operate in a far more flexible and cost-efficient way. Our customers want the plumbing to disappear - in the data centre, 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 virtualisation 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.”
VMware also announced it is partnering with Intel to deliver the VMware Client Virtualisation Platform (CVP) as a new product that will be part of the VMware View suite of desktop virtualisation products. The partnership, VMware says, will allow it to take advantage of Intel's vPro technology, and specifically the management and security functionality vPro offers.
Says Gregory Bryant, Intel VP, Business Client Group, and GM, Digital Office Platform Division: "By combining VMware CVP and Intel vPro technology, VMware provides IT with the tools to deliver the robust user experience that desktop and mobile workers need, combined with centralised image management through an innovative use of protected client virtualisation.”
VMware will release the CVP component in the second quarter of 2009.
* Samantha Perry was hosted by VMware at VMworld.
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