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In October 2015 VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS) formed partnership that would allow Amazon clients to run vSphere-based Cloud service on AWS infrastructure. The new service is called “VMware Cloud on AWS” and allows Amazon customers to use Enterprise level of the VMware’s software-defined data center platform. This means that they AWS customers will be able to run any application across vSphere and VMware powered private, public and hybrid cloud environments. The new services is operated, managed and sold by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service. AWS account holders will be able to use its developer tools, analytics, databases, etc.

VMware Cloud on AWS is optimized to run on the new bare metal AWS infrastructure. It will be powered by VMware Cloud Foundation, a platform which integrates VMware vSphere, VMware Virtual SAN and NSX virtualization technologies. Invite-only betas are expected to start in the beginning of 2017 with availability expected to be in the mid-2017 time-frame.

What Would Cloud Computing Users Expect From Cloud On AWS?

1. The service has been branded by both companies as “Best-in-class Hybrid Cloud Capabilities”. According to VMware and AWS it means “Enterprise class application performance, reliability, availability and security with the best-in-class VMware technologies, all optimized to run on AWS, the leading public cloud provider”.

2. VMware Cloud on AWS integrates companies’ in-house private data center with the AWS public cloud and allows them to using the same vCenter UIs, APIs and CLIs already in use. According to VMware “there’s nothing new to learn, and with vCenter Enhanced Linked Mode” and clients you will have a single pane of glass for managing on-premises and VMware Cloud resources on AWS.

3. The service will be operated, sold and supported by VMware, including all software components.

4. The “VMware Cloud on AWS” cloud instances will be seamlessly integrated with AWS Services and will have access to leverage AWS’s broad set of cloud-based services including storage, database, analytics, etc.

5. VMware and AWS promise full VM compatibility and total workload portability between client’s private data center and the AWS cloud.

6. VMware Cloud on AWS is ranked as “Elastically scalable”. It is expected to let account owners scale capacity up or down by adding or removing hosts.

7. The service is expected to remove the burden of managing the software patch, update and upgrade lifecycle for the user. Operating “as a service” means that VMware should ensure that client’s environment is always up to date.

8. VMware Cloud on AWS will be selling as subscription-based service and both VMware and ASW clients will be able to purchase dedicated compute clusters which run VMware software on the AWS infrastructure.

Why VMware and AWS Teamed Up?

First off such partnership is very beneficial to Amazon is it brings VMware’s unparalleled quality and stable virtualization software and Cloud computing products to AWS. Services like VMware’s High Availability and Automated Fault-Tolerance on the cloud would be virtually impossible or at very hard for AWS to offer to its customers. Having VMware’s Enterprise class virtualization and cloud software available, AWS would claim that its cloud infrastructure services outperform competitors in terms if productivity and stability.

For VMware the partnership with AWS means access to huge customers base. Amazon’s Cloud infrastructure services are quite expensive and even overpriced. VMware has been struggling to attract enough customers for its own Cloud services. It launched its own Public Cloud service called vCloud eight years ago in 2008. In 2013 VMware announced vCloud Hybrid Service and subsequently rebranded the program as vCloud Air. According to industry analysts vCloud Air program has been successful as Hybrid Cloud offering in the US, U.K., Germany, Japan and Australia. However, VMware has never made it with its Public Cloud. Now its aliens with Amazon is expected to correct this.

Despite that VMware is a undisputed leader of the virtualization software market the company did not have the same success on the Cloud service market. There are three huge public cloud service providers – Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure which offer a variety of value-added cloud services such as managed databases, storage services, data analytics, messaging, automated load balancing and auto-scaling and more. It would be virtually impossible to VMware alone to compete those three public clouds them in terms of the service portfolio and geographic locations.

One of the world’s leading server producers Dell released new line of servers, storage and system management products this week. The It giant said that its new products ease configuration and management of data center infrastructures.

Dell expects that IT companies that have tight budget budgets due to the economic slowdown will benefit from its new servers and will be able to carry out more tasks through virtualized environments. The company already said that it expects lowered hardware acquisition costs for those businesses who will use the new servers. The hardware producer also aims to equip servers and storage products with features that will help its clients to reduce power and cooling costs.

The Dell’s main objective however is to help businesses to reduce system administration costs. According to the hardware producer up to 70% of IT budgets go for maintenance. The company says that its new servers make easier to configure, standardize and virtualize IT environments.

Competitors Also Announced Cost-Efficient Hardware

Dell’s competitors have taken a similar approach to server management. Cisco has already announced the launch of Unified Computing System, which includes virtualization technology, services and blade servers. This was the company’s entrance in the server market. Like Dell, Cisco said it aims to help enterprises to develop and manage server installations in data centers. Besides the new player Cisco, Dell also competes to HP and IBM in the server market

Its new PowerEdge 11g servers will be powered by Intel’s Nehalem design. They will use Intel’s next-generation Xeon processors, designed to increase servers speed and performance per watt, compared to prior Intel processors. Dell did not released more details about the new servers. the company is expected to reveal more about the new servers shortly after Intel officially launches its Nehalem-based Xeon processor.

According to the hosting industry analysts the new processors will deliver between 20% and 30% increased performance on certain applications compared to past Xeon processors.

Dell is also said it plans the release of other power-efficient storage solutions. The company has said it adds features to the EqualLogic PS6000 Series arrays, including the new SSD (solid-state disk) option, which is promoted as a device that processes data more quickly while consuming less power. The new disk-based systems are expected to have starting price at $17,000.

Dell also launches a Management Console, which brings all device and task management controls under one application. This makes much more easier the management of hardware and software resources in a virtualized environments. The company has also stopped to ship CDs and DVDs with its servers, embedding system management capabilities and diagnostic capabilities directly into the new hardware.

Pictures of the new PowerEdge 11G Server Family can be found in Flikr.

Microsoft expects that its customers could use the future versions of Windows Server to manage and provide virtualized applications through the web the way company’s upcoming platform-as-a-service, Windows Azure does it.

“The corporate data center at some point in time will look like a mini-cloud, partitioned by application workload”, said Steven Martin, a senior director for developer platform product management at Microsoft. He added that the innovation in Azure and future versions of Windows Server will be shared, and “that code base will continue to cross-pollinate”.

Windows Azure is the Microsoft’s main weapon to make Windows Server the worlds dominating cloud computing platform. Microsoft promises to web developers to enable them to port or write applications using company’s popular .Net tools and Web standard interfaces such as REST, SOAP and Atom, and host them on Azure, a platform similar to Amazon.com’s EC2, Force.com, or Google’s App Engine. Azure is set to be launched later this year.

Azure To Bring A New Era In Hosting Industry?

Traditional web hosting providers runs their own hardware (rack mountable or desktop alike servers) in data centers, often owned by another company and run a number number of applications on them. This model of web hosting infrastructure is harder to manage and brings a number of set up costs. It is often time consuming to deploy a new hardware and to start new projects on customer’s demand.

All new generation hosting platforms – cloud hosting, clustered hosting systems and grid hosting platform – including the Microsoft’s Azure enable fast deployment and service setup, as well as allow IT businesses to sign up for a scalable web services without facing high upfront costs.

Azure runs on Windows Server 2008 inside Microsoft’s data centers. The company offers both Windows Server software and the Azure service as part of its “software+services” strategy. This might be considered as a plus from that are businesses unsure about committing completely to a cloud infrastructure.

Microsoft presented Windows Server 2008 with its Hyper-V hypervisor and Microsoft System Center. The world’s leading producer of PC software has outlined its initiatives for the hosting industry on its Microsoft Hosting Summit. The company claims to help web hosting providers to leverage virtualization and to lower their business costs.

One of the key products in Microsoft’s strategy to persuade web hosting providers to use its virtualization technology and its new Windows server is “Dynamic Data Center Toolkit”, which allows for the building and launching of managed services powered by Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center.

The Microsoft Toolkit holds guidance, sample code, best practices and collateral, that according to Microsoft  help web hosting companies to deploy managed hosting services. The Toolkit also offers step-by-step instructions for building a virtualized, scalable infrastructure.

Microsoft also offers a marketing guidance, that should help  web hosting providers to sell managed hosting services.