Advertisment

'VCHS may simply be the way VMware goes to market'

author-image
Sharath Kumar
New Update

SAN FRANCISO, USA: Virtualization and cloud infrastructure giant, VMware, has announced the general availability of the new VMware vCloud Hybrid Service, new data center locations, and new capabilities to make it simple to bring existing and new cloud-native applications to the public cloud.

Advertisment

With the new data centers and important new capabilities, Vmware is attempting to execute quickly against its vision of a hybrid cloud service that is completely interoperable with existing infrastructure and enables new and existing applications to run without compromise. vCloud Hybrid Service, built on VMware vSphere, enables customers to extend the same skills, tools, networking and security models across both on-premises and off-premises environments.

On the sidelines of VMware 2013, Angelos Kottas, director, Product Marketing, Hybrid Cloud Services, VMware talked to CIOL on VMWare's hybrid cloud strategy and data center plans for APAC and Europe. Excerpts:

CIOL: With the new offerings, VMware is getting into the service-line and maybe, getting into the bastion of a service provider. How does that work in the larger picture?

Advertisment

Angelos Kottas: It is a secular shift-every major software vendor is now in the SAS delivery business- everybody needs to meet this change in demand. VMware is going to a cloud services model not because we want to, but because our customers are taking us there. We know we can do a good job with our customers as we know about their requirements. By the same token, for the service providers, they couldn't differentiate their service offerings from what we do. So, we're forcing them to define their core differentiation, managed services capabilities, network service capabilities as the core infrastructure is going to be standardized. Analysts are talking about three-four years from now when there are going to be a handful of global infrastructure service providers.

Today, there are over 200 service providers- all those partners will not go out of business. They need to align those global mega providers and give them the best opportunity and that's where VMware's heritage is helping us have a partner centric DNA. The fact that we went to market from day one with a partner driven model; Amazon doesn't have that model, Microsoft does but didn't follow it for Azure, Google doesn't have that heritage. That's one of the benefits we have- that we go to market with a partner first and then figure out the rest.

One of the things about vCloud hybrid service is that this is not some side project. If we succeed with VCHS, this is the go-to market model for the core VMware portfolio. This is not a new product area- we are core vSphere, vCloud Suite. We are taking the core portfolio to the future with the service delivery model. VCHS may simply be the way VMware goes to market.

Advertisment

Every partner we talk to has a different response, depending on their focus. They can build and maintain managed hosting business and compliment it with VCHS when a customer needs a standardized infrastructure. Savvis is a good example of the same.

CIOL: How do you plan to extend the hybrid services in the developing countries where there are bandwidth issues?

AK: This is where franchise is an appealing option. The expertise to run a data center in an emerging market- the infrastructure, the relationship, the customer credibility is critical. It will probably be phased into three waves - wave one was our US launch, wave two will be core European-Asia Pacific launch, which will be in 2014. Wave 3 will extend to India, China, Brazil and other emerging markets where we see a lot of demand. We have to make sure that we have a good template before we go into these markets because there is less tolerance for variation there. We haven't publicly shared specific date lines for the launch of wave three yet, and will do so as and when.

Advertisment

CIOL: So are there chances of India launch see a spill over after 2015?

AK: We haven't explicitly said yes or no to it yet, partly because the franchise model allows us to accelerate market expansion significantly. We took a year to set up the US data centers, and one to two quarters to do the franchise relationships. As we work the model out, the expectation to add more regions and partners quickly. The second half of 2014 is when we see the roll out happening quickly.

CIOL: Considering India is where you would see the roll out, how would you work backward? What are you going to start doing right now to reach out to that deadline?

Advertisment

AK: This is where the existing VSPP ecosystem is critical. We are selling VMware's vision of hybrid cloud and our vision of hybrid cloud, which is around the consistency, compatibility; interoperability is one that we share with the service providers. We will take lessons from VCHS and offering and collaborating with our VSPP partners in regions to allow them to capture hybrid cloud workloads today.

The VSPP program has been running for two years now and we have about 35-40 VSPP partners who are using VMware technology to provide cloud services to our joint customers. So we're already using the technology. VCHS will bring a standardization that is currently not there- they are using the technology but they've all stacked. This will enable partners to use the whole stack which is what will take time. Whether we will use the franchise model or an existing VSPP model is a decision we will make in a couple of months.

VSPP partners who deliver the hybrid cloud message in a short term are more likely to be candidates for our go to market strategy for VCHS as well.

Advertisment

CIOL: What model would you most likely choose, as the way forward?

AK: We will set it up (data centers) in India with a partner. The question is: if it's a leasing and co-location relationship or a full-franchise relationship.

These partners are solution providers. We partnered with CDW, Insight, SHI, ePlus and Presidio. Other channel partners part of the VMware community. They can join and mandatorily take up the training curriculum. There's sales and technical training and the biggest piece is sales training which is how to interact with our back office regarding processes related to monthly billing, variable billing and other things part of the cloud model. In addition to the broad invitation, we have a light house partner program that has 25 partners who have been trained through the summer and will be ready on the first day of GA.

Advertisment

CIOL: Do you have the early access program in India?

AK: No, this was only in Las Vegas. This was opened in the first week of June and has been two and a half months. This was a paid service, but was an invitation only program where a handful of partners and strategic customers, who have history with VMware, were invited.

With general availability, any customer who wants the service can now sign up. That's the main difference plus the new data center capacity. When we go to India or Europe, we most likely will do some form of Early Access program to test the new go-to-market.

This would take maybe a quarter to launch and test for actual customer engagement.

CIOL: Would there be a difference when you run the program in Europe and India?

AK: There may be as we have to find a very specific architecture which is based on the economics of the US data center, taxation model, cost of power and things like that. We are starting with a standardized template across the six data centers with the exact same configuration. When we go to regions we may see some variations but it won't be completely different as the end user experience will be the same. As we operationalize it, we have to finalize the go-to market two quarters in advance- one to bring up the service with the partner and the other to run an early access program and then we'd be in a position to GA.

CIOL: It is a great announcement, but what do you think would spoil the party?

AK: To have direct customer experience matters most. If we struggle to provide consistent performance, not meet SLAs and cannot maintain a fairly constant innovation cycle, we may be on the wrong side. This is our biggest challenge. We just have to be careful. Every service provider has the same challenges to face and so do we. We just have to make sure it's an exception and not a rule.

smac