VMware invited some customers to participate in an exclusive interview with the private beta public cloud service to be conducted right away, but regardless of whether they will ever use it or not, it needs to be neutral.
This service builds on VMware's vCloud offerings, including vCloud Director, which is still a way to stay away from common usability from a variety of industry sources. At the same time, VMware advocates can use this service to discover service providers using vCloud, so moving to VMware's public cloud is not a must.
"VMware's products are attractive to me and I'm planning to migrate from BlueLock, although I still clearly understand what they are saying," said Bryan Bonds, senior systems administrator at eMeter, which has teamed up with vCloud Partners have built a hybrid cloud together.
Customers on the West Coast were invited to participate in the private beta release last week and said that while he would investigate the product, it was neutral when entering the public cloud.
At the same time, some industry watchers see the service as competing with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the public cloud market leader. VMware must compete with AWS on price to prevent further loss of the market, as infrastructure as a service has become a commodity.
Others see it as a reflection of VMware for existing cloud partners.
Bill Hill, director of infrastructure IT for a logistics company, said that although he does not have a direct VMware plan to enter the public cloud service, he said he is not surprised by its presence. "Finally, if you want to do something right, You have to do it yourself, "he said.
Although VMware declined to comment on its public cloud plans, it was reported that last week's VMware Partner Exchange CEO Pat Gelsinger was busy with some of the public cloud threats AWS poses, saying that if Amazon wins, VMware wants to own it Total workload, "we have failed."
VMware also updated its contract terms for the vCloud Service Evaluation Beta release on March 1. Although the initial product was announced in August last year as a minimum of 4 cents / hour / 1GB RAM server, the terms now include a 90-day free trial.
There is no time limit for customers using vCloud Service Evaluation, but the knowledge base files link to the beta interface. VMware officials also declined to comment on the future vCloud Service Evaluation Beta program.