No Aussie date for VMware hybrid cloud

VMware has not set a date for its vCloud hybrid cloud service to become available in Australia, despite launching the service for general consumption across the US as part of today's VMworld opener.

VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger and Network CTO Martin Casado

Australia-NZ head of VMware Duncan Bennet confirmed that international availability would kick off in 2014, but could not give any indication of what point after this Australian customers would be brought on board.

The US launch follows an expansion of VMware's data centre network across the country, with second and third facilities opening in California and Virginia, and a fourth underway in Dallas, Texas. It has also partnered with Savvis, which will offer vCloud hybrid services from its own US facilities.

The hybrid cloud will run disaster recovery-as-a-service and VMware's Horizon View as desktop-as-a-service.

The cloud service will be targeted at current VMware customers.

"Our core value proposition is to offer a compatible service offering to our existing clients. The cornerstone of our differentiation is making sure that the experience is as seamless as possible for these clients and the applications they know will work every time," said Bill Fathers from the hybrid cloud services business unit.

NSX launched

VMware has also used the event to announce a new product spearheading its push towards extending virtualisation into the network.

NSX, which was described as being analogous to the ESX server virtualisation platform but for the network, leverages upon the company's acquisition of network virtualisation specialist Nicira in 2012.

"NSX does the same thing for the network, it will expose virtual networks," explained Network CTO Martin Casados. "It creates what you can think of as a network hypervisor."

"Virtual networks look like physical networks, they will support existing workloads, they will support layers two through to seven service chains. But they have the operational model of a virtual machine," he said.

It will become available to US customers in the fourth quarter of this year.

Paris Cowan travelled to VMworld as a guest of VMware.