At the core of VMware’s closed-source business is the company’s ubiquitous vSphere ESX hypervisor
. Herrod noted that vSphere is used today by 400,000 companies. He estimated that there are more than 25 million virtual machines and a new VMware VM is born every 6 seconds.
“Today 60 percent of all applications are now running virutalized,” Herrod said. “So more apps than not don’t talk to the bare metal.”
VMware and OpenStack
Herrod candidly admitted that there are some areas of OpenStack that are competitive with VMware’s existing proprietary business. That said, he stressed that there are a lot of areas of alignment as well.
Herrod noted that VMware’s new Nicira division is a core part of the OpenStack community. Nicira was one of the leading drivers behind the OpenStack Quantum networking project, and VMware acquired Nicira earlier this year.
“The real reason we acquired Nicira is because of the work they have been doing [with] OpenStack,” Herrod said. “We’re 100 percent committed to continuing to work on Quantum.”
The big question, though, is what about vSphere. It’s a question that Herrod today answered in a definitive way for the first time publicly.
“If a customer is using OpenStack, we want them to be using vSphere,” Herrod stated. “We are now working on enhancing VMware vSphere for the OpenStack Nova compute stack
Read the full story at ServerWatch:
VMware vSphere Embraces OpenStack
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.