5 Ways VMware Says vCloud Air Is Different (And Better) Than Competing Clouds

Standing Out In The Cloud

VMware is a latecomer to the public cloud market, but along the path to building a dominant share of the private cloud space, the vendor feels as though it has built up a body of knowledge no one can match. And VMware has baked all of this learning into its vCloud Air public cloud offering.

The public cloud space is just heating up, so although VMware (like everyone else) is far behind Amazon Web Services, it still thinks there is time to catch up. VMware is trying to do this by adding features and functionality while also playing up the ability to move workloads back and forth between private and public clouds.

Following are five things about vCloud Air that VMware believes sets it apart from the competition.

5. Partnerships

VMware has more than 4,000 service provider partners running its software and selling vSphere-based cloud services. Collectively, VMware and the partners are generating well more than $2 billion in cloud services revenue, CEO Pat Gelsinger said in early February.

VMware revealed a partnership with Google in January to make some of the search giant's developer-focused services available to vCloud Air customers, which is the first of many VMware says it intends to form around its public cloud.

4. FedRAMP Certification

VMware has a huge base of government customers already running its vSphere server virtualization software in their data centers, and last month the vendor received a key certification from the U.S. Government's Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).

The important part: VMware private cloud customers will be able to move workloads back and forth to a FedRAMP-certified public cloud, Lynn Martin, vice president of public sector sales at VMware, told CRN last month.

Some of VMware cloud competitors also have FedRAMP certification, including AWS and Microsoft, but VMware has certainly built up enough understanding of its government customers' security and compliance needs to give those players a run for their money.

3. NSX Software-Defined Networking

VMware added NSX software-defined networking to its vCloud Air public cloud in January and is using it to offer advanced networking services slated to hit the market later this year.

NSX facilitates Border Gateway Protocol and Open Shortest Path First routing in vCloud Air, which is seen as a key to making hybrid clouds simpler to manage, according to VMware.

VMware says the services will let customers take advantage of the network security benefits of NSX. If an attacker gets in, NSX will make sure they're not able to move laterally and break into other parts of the network.

2. Common Hypervisor For Private And Public Clouds

VMware's vCloud Air runs on vSphere server virtualization, the same software that pretty much every VMware customer runs in their data center. Because of this commonality, VMware says its hybrid cloud offering allows for easier migration of workloads back and forth between public and private clouds.

This also means it's easier to move workloads between vCloud Air and the public clouds run by VMware's more than 4,000 service provider partners, according to VMware.

1. Supported Operating Systems

VMware is proud of the fact that vCloud Air supports more than 90 different operating systems, compared with about 10 for Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, and it's not shy about touting this.

Microsoft and AWS would say they support all of the OSes common in today's data center, and they'd be right. Yet VMware believes the broader support it offers customers gives vCloud Air an edge over those other clouds, while also making it easier to move workloads back and forth between VMware-based private clouds.