VMware announces its own OpenStack distribution

VMware will release VMware Integrated OpenStack next year, an OpenStack distribution optimized for VMware’s proprietary virtualization platform. In the company’s words, the service should overcome some of the shortcomings of the competing open source platform.

The first version of VMware Integrated OpenStack is based on the OpenStack Icehouse release. The distribution integrates OpenStack APIs and tools into the vCloud Suite and vSphere platforms, and VMware pledges to support and test all components of the distribution, including OpenStack’s open source code. VMware is also working with Canonical, HP and Red Hat, among others, to make their OpenStack offerings work with its own virtualization infrastructure as well.

The service is part of VMware’s offering for what the company calls the “software-defined data center.” OpenStack is essentially an open source competitor to the company, but the company has embraced the platform; it hired thirty developers to contribute code for the project.

With its own distribution, VMware says it solves a number of problems that enterprises in particular would encounter when rolling out OpenStack. Enterprises, among other things, would find the rollout ‘time-consuming’, while the infrastructure would also not meet their ‘security, resilience and performance requirements’. In addition, according to VMware, there are too few management options for enterprises.

VMware has released a beta for VMware Integrated OpenStack and plans to release it in the first half of next year. The company made the announcement at its VMworld 2014 event, which also announced the 6.1 version versions of its NSX offering and version 5.8 of the vCloud Suite. The company also made the beta of vSphere 6.0 available.