VMware adds to cloud strategy

VMware has security for its cloud OS, an API for integrating internal and external clouds and improved management features in store for the visitors of VMworld Europe, which kicks off on Tuesday.

At the event, the company will continue to build on the Virtual Datacenter Operating System (VDC-OS), the vCloud Initiative and the vClient Initiative -- all of which were announced in September at the U.S. version of the event.

All three initiatives will be important pillars of VMware's strategy, according to Bogomil Balkansky, VMware's senior director of product marketing.

Its VDC-OS, which will allow enterprises to build their own so-called "internal" clouds in their own data centers, has gotten a real name: vSphere, VMware CEO Paul Maritz announced during his keynote on Tuesday.

Maritz likes to think of the new architecture as a software mainframe, at least when he is talking to people over 45, and describes it as a new substrate of software that provides the foundation either for an internal cloud or a foundation for an external cloud provider.

"It allows you to very effectively pool resources together, and think of it as a single, giant computing resource," said Maritz.

Virtualization is fundamentally about encapsulating, according to Maritz. Users can take an existing application and all the complexity around it and package it into a "black box." Then they can use virtualization and VDC-OS to handle it in a much more flexible way, he said.

VMware isn't just naming its VDC-OS platform: It is also adding new parts, including a security service called vShield Zones, to its VDC-OS platform. The addition of vShield Zones will let users create separate zones in a cloud-based datacenter, similar to the notion of a demilitarized zone in the traditional IT infrastructure, but based on virtual machines rather than physical devices.

"Historically there has been a bit of a conflict between the security policy that is tied to the physical device and this new world of virtualization that is a lot more mobile and dynamic, and vShield Zones is really about marrying the best of both worlds," Balkansky said.

Virtual servers, which have been grouped in a zone, can still move around like they have before, but the security policy associated with the servers will also move with them, according to Balkansky.

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