VMware leaves contenders behind with 100 vCloud installations

Forget the open source cloud wars, VMware is setting the pace with vCloud being used to run 100 public clouds across 24 countries, up from just five when it was launched 18 months ago

And according to one VMware executive, this makes vCloud the “Cinderella” of the bunch, when stacked against the 'ugly sisters' of cloud. VMware's senior director of cloud product marketing, Matthew Lodge, claimed the raft of announcements concerning the likes of CloudStack and even OpenStack – which VMware backs as an open source alternative – still didn’t come near to the huge number of deployments of its proprietary vCloud offering.

“Last week, cloud watchers were treated to the spectacle of a dust-up between IaaS software camps jockeying to be the fairest cloud vendor of them all,” wrote Lodge.

“Like a bad remake of a Brothers Grimm fairytale, it seemed like the ugly sisters had gotten the message from the magic mirror that they were not the fairest in the land, and had decided to brew some potions, wave a few wands and declare themselves most attractive cloud IaaS platform.”

Lodge pointed to deployments such as Oxford University, which is using vCloud to connect over 40,000 researchers across the colleges, as well as Sega, which has adopted it for its test and development cycles.

“That’s not to say that VMware doesn’t like a good competitive fight,” added Lodge, “but the golden rule is to remember that the battle is for the privilege of serving customers.”

“Whoever successfully rides off into the sunset with Prince Charming – the satisfied customer – lives happily ever after.”

CloudPro asked Joe Baguley, chief cloud technologist in Europe for VMware, why his firm felt the need to react so staunchly to the recent goings on in the cloud market, but he merely said: “We were just highlighting how successful vCloud is, and how many companies are running their public clouds on VMware.”

The biggest change announced in recent weeks was Citrix donating CloudStack – Cloud.com’s open source cloud platform – back to the community, with the Apache Software foundation (ASF) taking the lead on its development.

In an article last week, Lydia Leong, research vice president at Gartner, claimed the move was less of an attack on OpenStack, despite it being affected, but more of a bullet shot in VMware’s direction.

“Make no mistake about it, this is not about scrappy free open-source upstarts trying to upset an established vendor ecosystem; this is a war between vendors,” she wrote.