(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Adding to the rather significant volume of news and announcements issuing from its VMworld partner conference (www.vmworld.com) taking place this week in San Francisco, virtualization technology vendor VMware (www.vmware.com), along with several of its partners, announced a collection of new hosting products based on the company’s solutions.
VMware announced the launch of several new projects within its vCloud Initiative Tuesday, including the vCloud Express product, an entry-level cloud computing solution offered through VMware hosting partners, which is designed to “enable customers to start with VMware vCloud Express and grow into full enterprise-class cloud environments . . . when they are ready to move into production.”
The vCloud Express solution is characterized by quick access to pay-as-you-go infrastructure compatible with in-house environments built on VMware, and emphasizes interoperability and portability, to make it possible to move applications from external development to internal deployment. For service providers working with vCloud, the Express product represents a more low-cost, entry-level product for companies that might otherwise focus on larger cloud implementations.
The emphasis on interoperability is a theme throughout the vCloud developments issuing from VMworld this week. The vCloud Express announcement from VMware describes VMware Virtualized, a new program within the vCloud initiative that is designed to qualify cloud services offered by service providers as compatible with customers’ internal VMware-powered infrastructure.
“The promise of cloud computing gives companies of all sizes a way to scale quickly to respond to the needs of their business and get out of the business of just maintaining the ‘plumbing’,” said VMware CEO and president Paul Maritz, quoted in the press release. “This week at VMworld, VMware and its partners will be delivering on this promise by introducing new technologies and services that are designed to give customers application compatibility, enterprise-readiness and choice in type of service and location to enable seamless interoperability and mobility between internal and external clouds.”
A handful of VMware partners issued announcements of their own promoting new vCloud Express products Tuesday and early on Wednesday, including Hosting.com (www.hosting.com) and Terremark (www.terremark.com). Those, and several, others appear on the relatively short list of early offerings highlighted on the vCloud Express page of the VMware website.
Terremark’s announcement described the vCloud Express product as an addition to its larger Enterprise Cloud offering, saying customers would be able to sign up for the service using a credit card and immediately begin accessing services through the Terremark Web console.
Along with the product itself, Terremark’s vCloud Express offering will include a product-specific website offering expert blogs, support forums and product documentation.
According to the site, Terremark’s vCloud Express offer starts at 3.6 cents per hour, with a detailed matrix describing the pricing available on the website.
Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud was launched in 2008, a high-end cloud computing offering designed to meet the performance, regulatory and compliance needs of large enterprises and government agencies. For the company, vCloud Express will add another tier of cloud computing services more applicable to the developer end of the customer spectrum.
Tuesday evening, Hosting.com announced that its vCloud Express offering would be available as a beta service beginning that day. Echoing much of the same sentiment as the VMware and Terremark announcements regarding interoperability and compatibility, Hosting.com says its offering will run on the company’s Cloud Enterprise infrastructure, adding to its portfolio of cloud services.
Priced starting at 42 cents per hour (with a similarly detailed chart of pricing available on the Hosting.com vCloud Express page), vCloud Express adds to Hosting.com’s portfolio of cloud hosting solutions that includes Cloud Enterprise, Cloud Dedicated and Cloud VPS.
“vCloud Express delivers control directly to customers. They can setup new accounts, adjust virtual machine resources, turn additional machines on or off and deploy and execute virtual machine commands with no human interaction – if so desired,” says Hosting.com CTO Craig McLellan, quoted in the company’s press release. “We will continue to innovate to deliver on the promises of capacity and infrastructure on-demand, utility-based pricing, and cloud interconnectivity.”
