VMware’s Cloudy Ambitions: Can It Repeat Hypervisor Success?

Summary:

VMware is pushing an aggressive cloud computing strategy, but questions remain as to how successful the vendor can be in its quest to become the dominant player at every layer of the cloud stack. The challenge will be repeating its early hypervisor dominance by getting a first-mover advantage in advanced virtualization and cloud deployments. Other vendors, such as Microsoft, Citrix, and Red Hat, now provide additional cloud capabilities, and cloud-management solutions mean organizations need not even choose a virtualization vendor to complete their cloud transitions. These report examines VMware’s advantages in the cloud computing sector, its competitors, and why, in the end, the company may be a leader, but should not expect to dominate.

  1. Table of Contents
  2. About Derrick Harris
  3. About Spiceworks
  4. About GigaOM Pro
  5. Executive Summary
  6. Introduction
  7. It All Begins with Server Virtualization
  8. vCloud: VMware’s Take on Infrastructure as a Service
  9. SpringSource: VMware’s Foundation for Platform as a Service
    1. Internal Platforms First
    2. Public PaaS Plans Shaping Up
  10. SaaS: Is Zimbra Just the First Move?
  11. Can VMware Pull Off its Cloud Vision?
    1. Large Ecosystems Mean a Big Head Start for VMware
      1. Hypervisor
      2. vCloud Partners
      3. SpringSource Platform
      4. Public PaaS Partners
    2. Competition is Growing By the Day
      1. Hypervisors
      2. Public Clouds
      3. Internal Clouds
      4. Java Platforms
  12. Conclusion
  13. Further Reading