Virtualisation bod VMware has opened up a second UK data centre, with a new site in Chessington, London, adding to the current data centre in Slough.
The move is evidently designed to represent UK and EMEA customers who want quicker access to their data, and comes a few months after VMware launched its hybrid disaster recovery service (vCHS), which provides a continuously available recovery platform if a data centre goes down.
Gavin Jackson, general manager and VP cloud services EMEA, said: “Our customers have started off using our hybrid service on specific projects for the easy, affordable and seamless movement of workloads between private and public cloud, knowing they can move their legacy and new applications back and forth with ease.
“Now they have seen what VMware vCloud Hybrid Service can enable, they’re turning to it to power their strategic transformation programmes.”
According to VMware, more than 800 EMEA-based individuals at partner organisations have been accredited in its vCloud Hybrid Service since it launched in the UK.
Jackson said in a Q&A blog post on the VMware site that the hybrid cloud service is so popular as it’s “the answer to the cloud dilemma.”
“Businesses are challenged in moving their apps to the public cloud because of the perceived problems it can pose,” he said. “vCHS means you can scale to the cloud without risk, and it’s an example of where highly innovative and trustworthy technology is meeting the needs of increasingly demanding companies and truly responding to business problems.”
It is a bit gushy, yes, but opening up UK data centres and catering for more bespoke, hybrid options from clients seems to be de rigeur with cloud vendors. SoftLayer opened the doors to a UK data centre last month, with further expansion expected in Central Europe.
VMware isn’t the only vendor to advocated hybrid, either. Rackspace unveiled its Managed Cloud offering which enables customers to have a variety of public, private or on-prem, either managed by Rackspace or DIY, while one of IBM’s latest product releases, Cloud Modular Management, offers similar capability.