VMware has fleshed out its future strategy for delivering IT as a cloud-based service, announcing plans to transform its current virtualisation platform into a virtual datacentre operating system capable of meeting various service level requirements.
The company also intends to enable an ecosystem that will allow end users to choose a provider without fear of being locked into a proprietary solution.
VMware president and chief executive Paul Maritz said at the VMworld Europe 2009 conference in Cannes that the firm will overhaul the VMware infrastructure platform to better deliver a cloud architecture. The new version, to succeed the current VMware Infrastructure 3, will be called vSphere.
Maritz explained during his keynote address that the company's cloud vision is constructed on standard building blocks, such as Windows servers, melded together to act as a single giant computer.
"If you like, we are trying to build a software mainframe. This is no longer about the hypervisor, it's about a co-operating substrate creating a single giant computer," he said.
VSphere is designed to co-ordinate hardware resources at the bottom end of the stack, and have hooks for applications at the other end. This will allow it to be aware of hardware such as virtualisation accelerators and any storage management or network layers, while third parties can provide plug-ins for data protection and anti-virus tools.
As part of this, Maritz indicated that VMware is restructuring its vCenter management suite to the service level, rather than the hardware level.
"We need to move the focus to a higher level, one that is meaningful to the end customer, and work in terms of service levels. You specify the service level you want, and [vCenter] delivers it," he said.
The new vCenter will be "extensible and federable", according to Maritz, and will enable users to come to it like a catalogue to choose the services they want. "You can even see who is using what resources, and it can integrate with billing systems at the back end," he said.
Maritz also outlined VMware's efforts around its vCloud initiative, designed to enable service providers to build cloud services for business customers, and allow them to have some of their IT operate this way instead of being provided internally.
"Companies can take the capital expenditure for hardware off their books and move it to someone else. We think [cloud] adoption will increase rapidly because of this," he said.
Maritz also said that VMware is starting to work with framework vendors and standards bodies to build standards for interoperable cloud services. This is needed to avoid customers becoming locked in to proprietary platforms operated by one or two big providers.
"It would be like the song Hotel California: you can check in, but you can never check out," he joked.
One company already using VMware technology to provide cloud services is hosting firm Terremark. Ken Silva, the company's chief technology officer, demonstrated during the keynote how Terremark customers have access to resource pools that enable them to create new servers when needed almost instantly.
Dan Chu, head of VMware's vCloud initiative, explained that there are several factors pushing cloud services, such as infrastructure-as-a-service, the provision of test and development resources, and outsourced disaster recovery.
Chu said that VMware has a vCloud application programming interface (API) that is not publicly available, but is already in use by key partners. This will enable interoperability between providers, he claimed.
"The vCloud API will be supported by an ecosystem of hundreds of providers, and will also provide compatibility with internal apps," he added.
However, this is still far from being a common standard that will work across platforms built on technology from other vendors such as Citrix and Microsoft.
Maritz said that VMware is "doing our bit with the standards bodies", but conceded that more work needed to be done. "We need to a hang together, or we'll all hang separately," he said.