VMware Adds New Jersey Data Center to Support Cloud Services

Building out its “second DNA” of a service provider, VMware has added a data center in Jersey City, New Jersey, to the fleet of locations supporting the VMware vCloud Hybrid Service.

Located in close proximity to New York and New England markets, this is the sixth data center supporting the service to date, and the company plans to add more in the near future.

VMware virtualization and tools form the basis of many enterprise clouds. The company saw an opportunity to provide its wares and expertise as a service, and began its push to become a cloud provider. Its focus is on hybrid deployments – not necessarily the mixing of on-premises and cloud, but providing customers the choice and flexibility to deploy how they want, whether on-premise or in the cloud.

Expanding to all key markets

Initial infrastructure for vCloud Hybrid Service was based in Las Vegas at the Switch SuperNAP facility. Everything was done out of Las Vegas up until general availability, which was launched in mid-2013.

The company then added data center space in Virginia and California to cover the coasts, as well as Dallas to cover the middle part of the country. The first international expansion was in Slough, UK in February. The New Jersey data center fills the void in the New York metro, on of the top data center markets in the country.

Non-disruptive cloud on-ramp

The service, built on VMware vSphere, enables customers to extend the same applications, networking, management, operations and tools across both on-premise and off-premise environments. Customers can manage and automate vCloud Hybrid Service from their vSphere console, vCloud Automation Center, vCloud Application Director and their own tools using the vCloud API.

“Our hybrid approach helps enterprise customers use the public cloud with an infrastructure that matches their existing architectures and data location, giving IT all the freedom of the public cloud with the manageability and security they expect from their existing data center or private cloud,” wrote the vCloud team on the company's official blog. “For IT departments, a hybrid cloud can remove traditional barriers to innovation and radically change the relationship between IT and the business.”

VMware also recently began beta testing for the next version of vSphere, its virtualization platform, which takes a more open approach than the company has taken in the past, as it’s kept its proprietary software close to its chest.

Amazon recently released a management portal for vCenter, which some pundits saw as a way for Amazon to poach some of VMware’s business.

VMware was a raving success during the early virtualization wars but now it steps into a new arena of voracious cloud providers. The new data center shows its commitment to continue investing in the vCloud Hybrid Service, and it’s hitting all the major markets first.

Angelos Kottas, director of product marketing, detailed the plans for VMware’s evolution last April. “Our second DNA is we will become a cloud service provider. We won’t get out of selling package software, but our first and primary route will become as-a-service delivery.”