VMware’s local partners are being encouraged to take advantage of the vendor’s cloud services as more companies invest in cloud computing.
Global cloud architect Mike DiPetrillo says the vCloud Express initiative, unveiled last September in the US, offers an interim solution for service and hosting providers developing clouds, and an alternative to Amazon's web services.
“It is an onramp to the cloud and designed to help our service providers and telcos go after that Amazon market. We said to partners that we wanted to help create something similar to it so the customers can come in and run on this VMware powered cloud.”
DiPetrillo says it has signed 1,500 partners globally to its VMware serivce provider programme, and these companies are building clouds for public release. 150,000 enterprises are making use of VMware clouds, he says. VMware has published application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow applications to be migrated between platforms in datacentres.
"If you get enterprise people to build private clouds and service providers to build public clouds you can federate those two together.”
DiPetrillo says New Zealand’s isolation will lead to the development of local clouds, and says locally-developed resources are key to greater federation between public and private clouds.
He adds local partner Maxnet is in the process of building a VMware cloud and was a founding partner for vCloud Express.
Maxnet chief technical officer Derek Gaeth says the public rollout will take place later this year at a yet to be confirmed date.
"We're working on the billing side at the moment before we launch a self service public offering to clients. All the infrastructure is there but we want to take a complete end to end view to servicing our customers' cloud needs."
ANZ regional manager Tim Dacombe-Bird says the results of a VMware study last year indicate cloud computing is growing in the ANZ region. The vendor polled 8000 ANZ customers about cloud computing.
“Fifteen percent have already deployed or are piloting cloud computing. An additional 26 percent are evaluating the technology which we felt was a large number. These results show that ANZ is clearly adopting or considering cloud computing which we expect to continue.”
He cited a recent study by IDC indicating cloud adoption is being amplified by the financial crisis.
“It’s given businesses a laser like focus on cost. IDC is saying that cloud computing is set to become a US$1 billion industry by 2013.”
Dacombe-Bird adds the local marketplace has adopted desktop virtualisation very quickly.
“We’ve seen a tremendous response from our customers across all market sectors. You’re not just selling VMware licences here but the storage and services as well. There is a big opportunity for our partner community.”