Originally positioned as VMware’s public cloud service and a vehicle for customers to manage hybrid clouds, vCloud Air now offers specialty cloud services and software with characteristics unique to VMware, Gelsinger said. The vCloud Air service will still exist, but it sounds like the business’ main focus will be to provide techology for partner-run clouds.

UPDATE: Having just listened to the Earnings Call and reading through the transcript, I’ve included a key Pat Gelsinger quote below:

I’d like to take a moment to clarify our strategy for vCloud Air; the service will have narrower focus providing specialized cloud software and services unique to VMware and distinct from other public cloud providers. We will aggressively provide these innovations to our vCloud Air Network partners helping them to accelerate their growth.

VMware is creating cloud software and cloud services for cloud providers. It’s important to note that given that’s narrower focus, we believe the capital expenses we’ve already invested in vCloud Air will be adequate for our needs and that we expect our vCloud Air service to be accretive by the end of 2017.

There is a massive opportunity here for the vCAN and together with the news in December at the renewed vCloud Director push (which I assume is still happening) the time is now to work to fully exploit the power of the APIs that are offered and exposed as part of the VMware Cloud stack. vCAN Service Providers should be a little more relaxed this morning on the news of vCloud Air’s apparent scaling back and the worry that was front and centre in terms of VMware’s reluctance to drive business to partners and VMware competing against vCAN partners in deals…should go away.

Again…time will tell!

#LongLivevCD

References:

https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/vmware-cuts-800-rethinks-cloud-vcloud-air/2016/01/

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3836736-vmware-vmw-ceo-pat-gelsinger-q4-2015-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=2

http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300079456/microsoft-partners-fed-up-vmware-customers-are-switching-to-azure-cloud.htm

https://rcpmag.com/articles/2016/01/26/vmware-layoffs-begin.aspx

Sidenote:

I have to eat a little humble pie and give credit to CRN journalist Kevin McLaughlin who has been hot on vCloud Air for a while now and has put together a couple of articles on vCloud Air struggling…I still don’t agree with the claims that current VMware customers are flocking to AWS and Azure, but certainly if the news of today is correct I acknowledge the reporting 🙂