VMware: service providers key to hybrid cloud delivery

Virtualisation player's CEO Paul Maritz outlines hybrid cloud go-to-market vision at VMworld event in Copenhagen

Paul Maritz: We are working with the service provider community to enable them to stand out in their external public clouds

Virtualisation giant VMware has reinforced its commitment to the hybrid cloud model by unveiling its go-to-market strategy for the technology

The vendor set out its hybrid cloud vision earlier this year at its partner conference in London, claiming it would allow end users greater choice in how to access applications and store data.

In his keynote speech at the vendor's VMworld partner event in Copenhagen today, chief executive Paul Maritz said service providers would play an important role in providing hybrid cloud services to end users.

He said: "What we are doing is working with the service provider community to enable them to stand out in their external public clouds so that [end users] can take one or more of their virtual datacentres and place that into a service provider's [public] cloud."

Maritz said the vendor's signing of service provider Colt last month demonstrated its commitment to the strategy.

Citing figures from IDC concerning how applications deployed on virtual servers now outnumber those hosted on physical machines, Maritz also described the IT industry as being "at tipping point" in regards to the cloud.

"If you look at figures from 2010, there will be more than 10 million applications deployed in virtual machines and the rate of growth of those applications is around 28 per cent, which is one of the highest growth rates of anything in the IT industry," he said.

"These growth rates have not happened just because of technology, but because of people. Over 190,000 customers use this technology delivered through our partners."