There’s no question that VMware is a power player in the world of cloud computing, but that doesn’t mean they always get things right. While the recent launch of Cloud Foundry – the company’s Platform as a Service choice – there have been questions surrounding other VMware products that seem to fill a similar niche, most notably vFabric.
vFabric was launched a year ago, and there are now a number of criticisms of the product for being middleware that doesn’t really stack up. The vFabric product has no integration with vCloud Director, and as such, isn’t considered an actual cloud service. Couple this with no indication from VMware about what’s happening with vFabric (if anything), and it’s no wonder the cloud world is talking.
But what does this mean for Cloud Foundry? With options for both hosted cloud offerings and “Micro Clouds,” intended to be private cloud development stacks, there are questions about whether or not vFabric is meant to supplement or compete with VMware’s newest offering.
VMware has recently been sucking up small companies in the cloud space, companies like Zimbra, SlideRocket and Mozy, following the example of other players in the business like EMC. The trouble, as industry experts see it, is that the technologies from these companies will never be fully integrated into VMware’s products, and that this in combination with the confusion about vFabric, could lead to problems in defining not only what VMware offers, but how it all fits together.
Cloud Foundry has real potential as an open-source PaaS tool, but its creators must be sure to identify not only where it fits, but how their other products are going to work alongside (or in competition with) this solution.
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