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VMware is NOT the technology enabler of the cloud

In a recently published German interview, a VMware employee has been thrilled himself to the, for me, very vague and questionable statement “VMware is the technology enabler of the cloud, and I currently see no other.”. Without offending VMware, this sentence sounds to me very overestimating and is like a loss of reality. There is no doubt that VMware is the king of virtualization, but to assert that nothing would work without them in the cloud is very presumptuous.

Reality distortion field

It is a development of Steve Jobs, the Reality distortion field“. It is the property of being able to convince someone of what is true and twist the facts, that in the end it looks as if it was his own idea. Fortunately, VMware says not that they invented cloud computing, which would not be a loss of reality, but delusions of grandeur.

Virtualization is not cloud computing

It is very presumptuous to assert beeing the technology God of the cloud. Just think about what VMware actually provides as the basis for the cloud. It is virtualization, so the hypervisor. Of course, virtualization is one of the main bases for the cloud. But there is much more to do in order to provision the virtual resources and use them.

Sticking to the hypervisor, nobody can deny that VMware is the market leader. Here they do a good job. Nevertheless one should not forget that the Amazon Web Services and Rackspace are using the open source hypervisor XEN. The HP Cloud just as the Google Compute Engine rely on KVM.

So, the real cloud computing market leader do not set on VMware. Therefore, there can be no talk of that VMware is the technology enabler of the cloud.

Furthermore, one should not forget the many other technology providers like openQRM, OpenStack, CloudStack, Eucalyptus, Microsoft, etc., who help companies to build infrastructures for the public as well for the private cloud. VMware is certainly a provider that meanwhile tries to got off his piece of the cake in the cloud. But in the end they are only one of many and have to hold one’s own like everyone else every day.

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I know that I will have no friends at VMware with this article. But such an intolerable assertion I can not leave on the Internet, sorry VMware!

By Rene Buest

Rene Buest is Gartner Analyst covering Infrastructure Services & Digital Operations. Prior to that he was Director of Technology Research at Arago, Senior Analyst and Cloud Practice Lead at Crisp Research, Principal Analyst at New Age Disruption and member of the worldwide Gigaom Research Analyst Network. Rene is considered as top cloud computing analyst in Germany and one of the worldwide top analysts in this area. In addition, he is one of the world’s top cloud computing influencers and belongs to the top 100 cloud computing experts on Twitter and Google+. Since the mid-90s he is focused on the strategic use of information technology in businesses and the IT impact on our society as well as disruptive technologies.

Rene Buest is the author of numerous professional technology articles. He regularly writes for well-known IT publications like Computerwoche, CIO Magazin, LANline as well as Silicon.de and is cited in German and international media – including New York Times, Forbes Magazin, Handelsblatt, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Wirtschaftswoche, Computerwoche, CIO, Manager Magazin and Harvard Business Manager. Furthermore Rene Buest is speaker and participant of experts rounds. He is founder of CloudUser.de and writes about cloud computing, IT infrastructure, technologies, management and strategies. He holds a diploma in computer engineering from the Hochschule Bremen (Dipl.-Informatiker (FH)) as well as a M.Sc. in IT-Management and Information Systems from the FHDW Paderborn.

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