Using cloud services costs money? You're out.

VMware and Rackspace Two well-known cloud computing companies yesterday released Low-cost or free trial versions of cloud computing products.

Red Hat announced earlier this week that it would also provide a free version of the cloud computing platform. Red Hat and Rackspace products can help users build private clouds based on OpenStack software code, while VMware's Vcloud provides a free version that allows customers to access public cloud resources.

One analyst said the move was a sign that cloud service providers could extend virtual environments to a public or private cloud in order to attract businesses.

They want to reduce the barriers that users extend from VMware preset virtual environments to public cloud services, which are provided by more than 150 VMware certified cloud vendors. Vcloud Service Product marketing director Joe Andrews says VMware's services today will be online in the coming weeks. The cost of a virtual machine costs 0.04 dollars per gigabyte of memory.

Lydia Leong, Gartner's cloud analyst, says this will lead some VMware users to try public cloud services. "It's a basic product that doesn't have any fancy features, but it's a reasonable way to get the VMware Cloud ' feel '," she said, noting that this does not mean that it is a formal proof-of-concept evaluation tool.

VMware has been circulating in recent weeks about the news of its own IaaS products. VMware spokeswoman Andrews said he was unable to comment on rumours but said VMware would "continue to invest in our service provider's ecosystem", noting that VMware was a "partner-led company". Paul Maritz, VMware's president and chief executive, will resign from his position next month, with EMC CEO Pat Gelsinger.

At the same time, Rackspace will redouble its investment in OpenStack, including a recently released OpenStack product, the world's largest openstack-driven public cloud deployment. Rackspace's free private cloud software code-named "Alamo" includes an Ubuntu operating system running a KVM management program. Private cloud software can deploy deployments on customers ' own data centers, Rackspace data centers, or a host-managed facility.

Rackspace's private cloud expert Jim Curry says the company encourages a hybrid cloud deployment that will allow customers to connect a private cloud to the company's OpenStack public cloud.

Curry said: "We believe that most of our customers and cloud users will be in a mixed cloud environment for a long time, this may be the company in this direction take the first step." ”

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)