This article is more than 1 year old

Rackspace looks to have bypassed vCloud Director upgrade

Signs with cashed-up upstart AirVM for Virtzilla-powered cloud management

Rackspace has decided to manage its VMware cloud with software from upstart AirVM.

The decision is great news for AirVM and almost certainly unwelcome for VMware, which has of late been beta testing a new version of vCloud Director, the code it offers service providers to manage and operate their VMware-based clouds.

VMware often mentions Rackspace when asked if operating its own cloud, vCloud Air, means it is snubbing partners. If Rackspace can see a business doing managed VMware, argues VMware, that proves partners still have opportunities.

Rackspace, for its part, seems to think that opportunity is most easily seized if running AirVM's AirSembly software, which this week reached version 2.0. AirVM CEO Josh Vantour thinks new features enabling VMware-based cloud operators to offer self-service portals to their end user customers, and hook those into financial management tools to handle billing, will be appreciated. The software can also perform for partners reselling vCloud Air, VMware's public cloud.

Rackspace biting won't hurt AirVM's attempts to make VMware's partner community aware of its offerings. Indeed, it may have helped AirVM's cause among the venture capital community, as it announced on Thursday that it's just scored US$8.0 million in Series A funding. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like