Is VMware's federated cloud all puff and no trousers?

Davey Winder
Thursday, 25 September 2008 21:49

Business IT - Technology

VMware has been puffing it's chest up and pulling it's stomach in to talk up the promise of stretching business applications across data centres in a federated cloud fashion. Of course, in the real world when you hold your tummy in your trousers fall down...

Last week VMware, at it's own user conference, did a damn fine job of portraying itself as the driving force in the virtualisation market, pushing data centre automation into the cloud with federated services to save businesses when they need those extra resources.

It has not escaped the notice of the great and good, as well as IT consultants and analysts, that VMware appeared to have it's own head firmly up in the cloud as it spoke of these things.

A vision several years away from the real world the rest of us live in, to be fair. Tim Stammers, a senior analyst at Ovum, reckons it does all highlight the huge benefits that virtualisation can bring beyond mere consolidation by way of server fluidity.

According to Stammers, the most important developments that VMware talked about last week were new and enhanced server management tools. Tools that can help grow the customer base in the near-term before Microsoft muscles itself in.

"Unlike those from Microsoft, VMware’s tools do not work with rival v-word systems" Stammers points out "and the company says there is not yet enough demand from its customers to make it worthwhile to change this situation."

With VMware accounting for anywhere up to 80 percent of server virtualisation you have to assume that it knows best. The competition certainly seem to think so, after all everyone and their dog has followed VMware into server virtualisation because, as CEO Paul Maritz puts it "that is where the money was." But as Stammers says "note the past tense."

That was then, and the money now is likely to be flowing in the direction of desktop virtualisation, and customers will buy desktop and server products from the same vendor. Which could be problematical for VMware.

After all Citrix claims 100 million clients powered by XenApp, used by 99 percent of the Fortune 500 no less. Microsoft can throw Windows and Terminal Services into the ring.

Stammers reckons that "so far VMware’s desktop software has not been about accessing virtual desktops across a wide-area network, but about using a single desktop box to run multiple OSs when developing cross-platform applications, or running Windows applications on Apple machines."

But it is when we look up in that cloud where VMware want to compete with Microsoft in the future, that's where the trousers start to wobble and fall, indeed some might say where the pants catch fire.

"One of VMware’s boldest promises is that businesses will be able to stretch applications across their own and service providers’ data centers when they need extra resources" Stammers says, adding "all of this is some way distant from real-world use."