VMware set to transform cloud computing

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 21 April 2009 11:20

Business IT - Technology

VMware has announced a new virtual operating system designed to amalgamate multiple servers, network and storage devices in multiple locations into a single entity that can be used to support multiple applications with the allocation of resources between applications being fully flexible in real time.

Paul Harapin, managing director of VMware Australia, told iTWire: "What we are announcing is the world's first cloud operating system: aggregating large pools of processer, storage and network resources and making these available to any business application. I truly believe this is the most transformational announcement in IT for the next generation. It changes everything about the way we use IT.

The new product ,VSphere 4, is designed to operate across hardware in different locations, so, for example an enterprise could carry out most of its processing on internal systems and bring in external resources from an outsourced data centre only at times of heavy workload or in the event of failure of internal hardware.


"I can have some of my infrastructure as an internal cloud and can access part of someone's external cloud as well. It allows an app to move from host to host within the data centre and outside but to maintain total visibility," Harapin said.

vSphere 4 also represents a huge increase in scale. According to Harapin "What this announcement does is to take scalability to a level never seen before. One VMware server can run the equivalent of five times Visa's global payment network. One VMware server can run the equivalent of three times eBay's global page view count. You can handle all that processing power under one virtual machine.

This power, he said could be dedicated to one or thousands of applications. "You can now have all the processing power available for one application and move it from application to application hour by hour. We can now scale to cloud level of infrastructure where one service provider can run thousands of customers' operations of one virtual machine. This is the 21st century version of the mainframe. From the applications' perspective it has one giant computer of server, storage and networking that it can use if it wants, and if it doesn't it is free for to other uses.

Harapin added: "This is all totally non-proprietary. A customer can choose whatever hardware platform and whatever operating system and whatever service provider they want. Today there is huge chasm between the enterprise data centre and the cloud applications the likes of google are providing. Once you are in there you cannot get out unless you rewrite every application."