Following on from Chris Ward’s excellent blog coming out of VMware PEX 2015, I wanted to add some details to the recent VMware announcement (January 29, 2015) to partner with Google to “deliver greater enterprise access to public cloud services” via a combination of VMware vCloud Air and the Google Cloud Platform.

For those who are unfamiliar, vCloud Air (formally VMware vCloud Hybrid Service or vCHS) is a public Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud platform built on the same traditional VMware vSphere we are all used to but managed 24/7 by VMware and their public cloud partners.  vCloud Air offers services such as infrastructure, disaster recovery and backups, and allows you to extend both your network and workloads from traditional on-premise to the cloud with relative ease.

For some time now, Google has offered broad cloud platform services in the following categories, but as part of the first wave of integration into the vCloud Air space, only the highlighted sub-set of (4) Google Cloud Platform services will be made available to existing VMware vCloud Air customers, using a PAYG consumption model:

 

• Compute (no current/planned integration points)

• Storage
  • Cloud Storage – Google’s distributed low-cost object storage service
  • Cloud Datastore – Google’s schema-less, document-based NoSQL database service with automatic scale and full transactional integrity.

• Networking
  • Cloud DNS – A globally distributed low-latency DNS service

• Big Data
  • BigQuery – A real-time big data analytics service suitable for running ad-hoc BI queries across billions of data points in seconds.

• Services (no current/planned integration points)

• Management (no current/planned integration points)

 

Additionally, while Google offers their own management framework, there are some rumors that the partnership could eventually mature to include integration with VMware’s own vRealize Operations management solution.  This will most likely be offered via VMware’s vRealize Air platform (in beta), which currently offers both Automation and Compliance programs.  To quote our CTO, Chris Ward, “VMware vRealize Air checks a lot of boxes for customers of all sizes seeking multi-vendor, multi-cloud provisioning and management of their infrastructure services.

Industry experts, including GreenPages, Forrester and Gartner, are calling this partnership a big “win” for VMware customers, especially enterprise customers.  This relationship will help to truly legitimize not only the cloud, but also the place of the enterprise customer in the cloud.  Specifically, it will allow enterprise customers who are looking for broader database, analytics, and storage options and support, beyond the current vCloud Air portfolio, to find a suitable and scalable landing place for their applications and workloads.  This will build on vCloud Air’s current support for over 5,000 applications and over 90 operating systems.

This is also a strong move for both VMware and Google.  This relationship will give Google much needed enterprise IT exposure, something that VMware has deep roots in, and accelerates VMware’s ability to offer tools to manage a public cloud, an area in which Google has developed a global dominate position.

As with the vSphere 6 announcement, there is no “official” release date, but rumors are suggesting everything from the “first half of 2015” to availability “later this year.”  Additionally, VMware had no details to share around pricing, but as soon as we know more and have had a chance to sample the integration ourselves, we will share more details.  However, if history is anything to go by we should likely expect something in place by VMworld 2015.

If you have any questions or would like any additional details around this new partnership, email us at socialmedia@greenpages.com

By Tim Cook, Practice Manager, Advanced Virtualization