News that VMware’s cloud efforts are supported only by VMware products is troubling for the security of cloud services.
If the cloud initiative unfolds as it is described in this report, the transfer of customer data among cloud service providers could be difficult. When customers decide their best interests are served by moving to another service provider, how will that data be moved?
When customers can’t readily get their data back from their cloud provider, that is a security problem.
For its part, VMware points to its vCloud API that others can write to in order to make it easier for this type of transfer to take place. The trouble is that cloud providers that choose to use a different virtualization platform must make the effort to adapt their infrastructure to VMware’s API if they want to be able to smoothly transfer data. It’s a question whether they will make the effort.
At the same time VMware is making a big deal out of its API it is trumpeting that it has more than 1,000 service provider partners. This helps explain the reluctance of VMware to build support of other vendors virtualization platforms into its own. There’s a land grab going on by the virtualization vendors to scoop up as many service provider customers as they can while their number is still growing.
If Vware can grab enough of these cloud providers as customers, it could lay claim that it is the de facto standard and force all other vendors to deal with them rather than cooperating with the other vendors.
Ultimately, service providers need to provide the ability to shift data to and from other providers’ networks. But for now it is more important to get those providers as customers.
That doesn’t change the needs of businesses that want to use cloud services. They need to know before they sign a service contract that they can get their data out or transfer it to another provider when they choose to. So for now these businesses need to find out what service providers’ plans are for transferring data if customers decide to terminate their contracts. They need to hear a good answer before they commit their data to any provider.
