I’ve been wanting to write some commentary around the
vCloud Air and
Virtustream merger since
rumours of it took place just before VMworld in Auguest and I’ve certainly been more interested in the whole state of play since news of the EMC/VMware Cloud Services spin off was
announced in late October…the basis of this new entity is to try and get a strangle hold in the Hybrid Cloud market which is widely known to make up the biggest chunk of the Cloud market for the foreseeable future topping
$90 billion by 2020.
Below are some of the key points lifted from the
Press Release:
- EMC and VMware plan to form new cloud services business creating the industry’s most comprehensive hybrid cloud portfolio
- Will incorporate and align cloud capabilities of EMC Information Infrastructure, Virtustream and VMware to provide the complete spectrum of on- and off-premises cloud offerings
- The new cloud services business will be jointly owned 50:50 by VMware and EMC and will operate under the Virtustream brand led by CEO Rodney Rogers
- Virtustream’s financial results to be consolidated into VMware financial statements beginning in Q1 2016
- Virtustream is expected to generate multiple hundreds of millions of dollars in recurring revenue in 2016, focused on enterprise-centric cloud services, with an outlook to grow to a multi-billion business over the next several years
- VMware will establish a Cloud Provider Software business unit incorporating existing VMware cloud management offerings and Virtustream’s software assets — including the xStream cloud management platform and others.
I’ve got a vested interest in the success or otherwise of vCloud Air as it directly impacts Zettagrid and the rest of the vCloud Air Network as well as my current professional area of focus however I feel I am still able to provide leveled feedback when it comes to vCloud Air and the time was finally right to comment after yesterday evening comming across the following LinkedIn Post from Nitin Bahdur
It grabbed my attention not only because of my participation in the vCloud Air Network but also because the knives have been out for vCloud Air almost before the service was launched as vCloud Hybrid Services. The post its self from Nitin though brief, was suggesting that VMware should further embrace it’s partnership with Google Cloud and just look to direct VMware Cloud customers onto the Google Cloud. The suggestion was based on letting VMware Orchestrate workloads on Google while letting Google do what it’s best at…which was surprisingly Infrastructure.
With that in mind I want to point out that vCloud Air is nowhere near the equal of AWS, Azure or Google in terms of total service offerings but in my opinion it’s never been about trying to match those public cloud players platform services end to end. Where VMware (and by extension it’s Service Provider Partners) does have an advantage is in the fact that in reality, VMware does do Infrastructure brilliantly and has the undisputed market share among other hypervisor platforms therefore giving it a clear advantage when talking about the total addressable market for Hybrid Cloud services.
As businesses look to go through their natural hardware refresh cycles the current options are:
- Acquire new compute and storage hardware for existing workloads (Private – CapEx)
- Migrate VM workloads to a cloud based service (IaaS – OpEx)
- Move some application workloads into modern Cloud Services (SaaS)
- Move all workloads to cloud and have third parties provide all core business services (SaaS, PaaS)
Without going into too much detail around each option…at a higher level where vCloud Air and the vCloud Air Network has the advantage in that most businesses I come across are not ready to move into the cloud holistically and for the next three to five years existing VM workloads will need a home as businesses work out a way to come to terms with an eventual move towards the next phase of cloud adoption which is all about platform and software delivered in a cloud native way.
Another reason why vCloud Air and the Air Network is attractive is because migration and conversion of VMs is still problematic and a massive pain (in the you know what) for most businesses to contemplate undertaking…let alone spend the additional capital on. A platform that offers the same underlying infrastructure as what’s out there as what vCloud Air, the vCloud Air Network partners and what Virtustream offers should continue to do well and there is enough ESXi based VMs out there to keep VMware based cloud providers busy for a while yet.
vCloud Air isn’t even close to being perfect and has a long way to go to even begin to catch up with the bigger players and VMware/EMC/DELL might well choose to wrap it up but my feel is that that would be a mistake…certainly it needs to evolve but the platform has a great advantage and it, along with the vCloud Air Network should be able to cash in.
In the next part I will look at what Virtustream brings to the table and how VMware can combine the best of both entities into a service that can and should do well over the next 3-5 years as the Cloud Market starts to mature and move into different territory leading into the next shift in cloud delivery.
References:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/should-vmware-kill-vcloud-air-instead-use-google-cloud-nitin-bahadur
http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300077924/sources-vmware-cutting-back-on-vcloud-air-development-may-stop-work-on-new-features.htm
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed/EMC-and-VMware-Reveal-New-Cloud-Services-Business/2975020-manual?x-src=paidsearch_vcloudair_general_google_search_anz&kw=nsx%20+vcloud%20air&mt=b&gclid=Cj0KEQiAj8uyBRDawI3XhYqOy4gBEiQAl8BJbWUytu-I8GaYbrRGIiTuUQe9j6VTPMAmKJoqtUyCScAaAuGv8P8HAQ
http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/hybrid-cloud.asp
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