VMware insists vCloud launch won't tread on partners' toes

Vendor rolls out vCloud Hybrid Service across EMEA, but insists the market is big enough for partners too

VMware has insisted that its vCloud Hybrid Service, which is set to be rolled out across Europe soon, will not put it on a collision course with partners.

At its VMworld partner and customer event in Barcelona, the firm unveiled plans to bring its service to Europe, based from a Slough datacentre from which it is set to rent space. The service will be available in Q4 in the UK as a beta programme, with wider European availability set for the start of next year.

VMware claims the service enables customers to extend the same applications, networking, management, operations and tools across on- and off-premise environments. Having a locally hosted service in Europe is timely in light of the recent National Security Agency revelations, which prompted calls for changes to European Union cloud laws in order to better protect data, it added.

Speaking at a press conference at VMworld, the virtualisation giant's general manager for hybrid cloud services Bill Fathers insisted the service will not tread on the toes of its channel.

"Initially, being realistic, announcing a potentially competitive service caused a few conversations with some of our partners," he admitted. "But to be very clear, all the technology we are building... we are going to make available to all our very valuable partners.

"Our strategy is to continue to make as many of our partners as successful as possible. It may be seen as a competitive offering but it is a vast market in which service providers have a massive ability to differentiate themselves."

VMware's UK channel manager Ed Dolman echoed Fathers' sentiment and said VMware was the only large vendor of a cloud service pushing out a similar product through a two-tier channel.

The vendor is in discussions with reseller partners about which ones will be signed up to sell the new service in the UK, he added.

"We're going to have to scale up; it is not possible to throw these things out to the wider channel on day one," he said.

"We will define who exactly those partners are come Q1 and for now there will be a beta – we're talking to Softcat [for example] before we launch formally in Q1 when we can talk about margins and channel programmes and so on."