VMware, Bluelock To Offer Beta Hybrid Cloud Operation

BlueLock's CloudConnector overlays the VMware client and makes uses the new vCloud Director to coordinate workloads between an on-premises private cloud and BlueLock's public cloud.

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At VMworld, VMware announced it would provide external data center services through five partners, three of them in the U.S. These partners are geared up to provide VMware vSphere 4 compatible environments and potentially a simplified way of moving an ESX Server workload from the enterprise into the cloud.

Verizon Business and Terremark are relatively well know U.S.-based cloud service providers. The third was BlueLock, an Indianapolis-based supplier of data center services. As BlueLock was named, it announced that it would supply CloudConnector, a management interface that would let VMware customers to see their workloads running in BlueLock as well as in their home data center on a single pane of glass.

VMware typically supplies a Windows client interface to its vSphere 4 Infrastructure management system. BlueLock's CloudConnector overlays the VMware client and makes use of a new VMware product, vCloud Director, to coordinate workloads between an on-premises private cloud and BlueLock public cloud.

"If you know how to manage your virtual machines with the VMware vSphere Client, you know how to manage our cloud with BlueLock CloudConnector," said Pat O'Day, CTO of BlueLock in an VMworld show announcement last week on the release of CloudConnector.

VMware's recruiting of Verizon, Terremark and BlueLock solves a problem for it as it tries to guide its customers toward the private cloud and hybrid cloud computing, combining private cloud operation with some export of workloads to a public cloud. VMware customers can't make use of Amazon Web Services EC2 cloud, the market leader, due to incompatible virtual machine file formats. So VMware is seeding the market with VMware compatible cloud service providers with service provider versions of its software. The VMware-BlueLock partnership "enables enterprises to improve efficiency and agility by leveraging internal and external resources in a fully compatible, compliant and flexible manner," said VMware CEO Paul Maritz in the announcement Aug. 31.

BlueLock hosted services are available in beta form to customers who wish to try them out with a beta account, said O'Day. Fully supported general availability will follow later this year.

Existing BlueLock customers include the Indianapolis law firm, Wooden and McLaughlin; Pathagility, a supplier of clinical data reporting between healthcare providers and healthcare institutions; and LOGiQ3, a life reinsurance company.

The additional international suppliers were Colt, a data center services provider with 19 data centers in 14 European cities, including London, Paris, Frankfurt, Copenhagen and Barcelona. The other was Singtel, the Singapore telephone company.