VMware Data Center for Cloud Lights Up in Melbourne

VMware has opened a vCloud Air data center in a Telstra facility in Melbourne. There are now just under ten VMware data centers in support of its public cloud infrastructure, aimed squarely at the enterprise IT shop. vCloud Air is pitched to those with vSphere environments in their facilities wanting to hook into public cloud.

The VMware data center will serve several surrounding cities as well as New Zealand. Serving directly from within Australia reduces latency for those customers and addresses data sovereignty concerns.

Melbourne will also offer an updated disaster recovery service out of the data center. Disaster recovery has been a popular use case for vCloud Air.

"Australian businesses will have the ability to seamlessly extend applications into the cloud without any additional configuration, and will have peace of mind, knowing this IT infrastructure will provide a level of reliability and business continuity comparable to in-house IT,” said Duncan Bennet, a vice president and managing director for VMware in the region. “It means businesses can quickly respond to changing business conditions and scale IT up and down as required without disruption to the overall business."

Australian telco and data center services giant Telstra is providing the data centers behind VMware’s public cloud in the country. VMware announced its partnership with Telstra late last year.

VMware Cloud Services Business Unit executive vice president and general manager Bill Fathers called Australia "a critical mature market and bellwether for enterprise IT in the Asia Pacific region."

Melbourne enhances vCloud’s Asia Pacific coverage, joining a data center in Tokyo. A possible next location is Singapore, a major hub in the region.

The majority of vCloud Air data centers are in the U.S. In Europe, there are two in the U.K. and a recently opened location in Frankfurt.

The company added Virtual Network Functions through several vendors using vCloud as the underlying infrastructure last month.

vSphere 6, the latest release of VMware's flagship cloud software suite, recently entered general ability. vSphere is a software complement to vCloud infrastructure in a wider hybrid cloud strategy.