How VMware Plans to Conquer the Cloud Market
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By
Frank Konkel
The company is now squarely in the public sector cloud services market, challenging Amazon Web Services, CGI Federal, Autonomic Resources, IBM, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Oracle and others.
There’s a new cloud service offering that has met the government’s standardized cloud computing security requirements, and it’s one every major federal agency IT official will recognize.
VMware, already a known name in virtualization, announced today its VMware vCloud Government Service has achieved compliance under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program.
In achieving compliance, VMware partnered with Carpathia – thus the lengthy moniker “VMware vCloud Government Services provided by Carpathia” – which ultimately means VMware cloud services will run on and be delivered through Carpathia’s data centers.
VMware is now squarely in the public sector cloud services market, which includes mainstays like Amazon Web Services, CGI Federal, Autonomic Resources, IBM, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Oracle and others.
But what’s particularly interesting about VMware’s infrastructure-as-a-service offering is that it’s compatible with VMware’s vSphere virtualization platform used in all cabinet-level agencies and all three branches of government.
VMware believes its compatibility will allow agencies to “move workloads seamlessly between their internal resources and the cloud,” according to press statements. Given VMware’s dominant position in the virtualization market, if it can keep down its cloud services price point, VMware may be uniquely poised to challenge larger cloud service providers like AWS for business.
It’ll be interesting to see whether VMware can capitalize on its name recognition and reported compatibility in 2015. President Obama’s proposed 2016 budget, which calls for $86 billion for IT spending, charges that 8.5 percent of that target will be spent on provisioned services like cloud. That means some $7.3 billion will be up for grabs in cloud spending.
In today's other VMware-related news: CIO Tony Scott has been tapped as the next federal CIO and will be replacing Steven VanRoekel, who left his post last September.
(Image via 3dreams/Shutterstock.com)