With VMWare seeking a larger cloud footprint and Google looking to tiptoe deeper into the realm of the enterprise, the two are joining forces that could spur them ahead of Microsoft and closer to Amazon Web Services in the competitive cloud services battle.
The agreement between Google and VMWare will provide enterprise customers a hybrid service that marries the scalability of the Google Cloud Platform and the power of VMWare's virtualization, according to Murali Sitaram, managing director of Google's Global Partner Strategy & Alliances division.
"As a result of this agreement, enterprise customers will be able to combine their VMware cloud environments with the security, scalability, and price performance of Google's public cloud, built on the same infrastructure that allows Google to return billions of search results in milliseconds," says Sitaram.
VMware's vCloud now benefits from four of Google Cloud Platform services and more will be rolled out down the line. Google Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Cloud Data Store and Cloud DNS are now available in vCloud.
Google and VMware are also investigating ways to take advantage of each other's strengths and assessing the interconnectivity between Google Cloud Platform and the vRealize Cloud suite of management tools.
"We are excited to expand our relationship with Google, and offer customers the ability to use Google's rich portfolio of services while running their mission critical applications on the vCloud air platform," says Bill Fathers, executive VP and general manager, Cloud Services Business Unit, VMware.
Sitaram and Fathers may both be using official language to talk up the agreement between Google and Vmware, but that doesn't change the fact that this may be a pivotal strategy that could knock Amazon Web Services (AWS) off its market leading perch.
Amazon recently reported AWS use grew a staggering 90 percent, year-over-year, in the last quarter. Amazon is clearly not sitting on its laurels as it just released the WorkMail email platform for enterprises.
