Cloud operating system

VMware has announced VMware vSphere 4, the industry’s first operating system for building the internal cloud, enabling the delivery of reliable IT as a service.

As the complexity of IT environments has continued to increase over time, customers’ share of IT budgets are increasingly spent on simply trying to 'keep the lights on'. With the promise of cloud computing, customers are eager to achieve the benefits, but struggle to see the path to getting there. Leveraging vSphere 4, customers can take pragmatic steps to achieve cloud computing within their own IT environments. With these 'internal' clouds, IT departments can respond more rapidly to changing business requirements.

VMware vSphere 4 will aggregate and holistically manage large pools of infrastructure — processors, storage and networking — as a seamless, flexible and dynamic operating environment. For enterprises, VMware vSphere will bring the power of cloud computing to the data centre, slashing IT costs while dramatically increasing IT responsiveness. For hosting service providers, vSphere will enable a more economic and efficient path to delivering cloud services that are compatible with customers’ internal cloud infrastructures. Over time, VMware will support dynamic federation between internal and external clouds, enabling 'private' cloud environments that span multiple data centres and/or cloud providers.

"The days of the traditional monolithic operating system are numbered,” said Chris Wolf, senior analyst with Burton Group. “Server platforms are now being purpose-built for virtualised workloads, and many of the roles associated with the traditional OS are transitioning to virtualised internal and external cloud-based infrastructures. Organisations looking to gain the operational and financial benefits of cloud-based IT can do so today by deploying purpose-built cloud infrastructure software that streamlines internal data centre operations, while providing a gateway to future external cloud expansion.”