New global collaboration between VMware and IBM will make it easier than ever to create and deploy VMware-based Clouds seamlessly

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Today, IBM and VMware announced a strategic partnership to accelerate enterprise hybrid cloud adoption.

I am so excited about this new partnership, which is unique on the market, that I need to share it as a post since it can benefit both hosting providers and ISV’s to become a truely hybrid Cloud option to their clients…

There are three key reason why Hosting companies and ISV’s will view this announcement as strategically important to help accelerate your transformation to Cloud

Move more workloads to Public Cloud – With seamless operation, you can now quickly and easily transition many of your internal workloads (running on VMware) into the public cloud (SoftLayer). This is now possible because IBM and VMware have done all the hard work to codify the technical architecture and infrastructure needed to have true hybrid cloud transparency across a single VMware environment. In the past this was certainly possible to do, but it required extensive skills, engineering, and customization that often left customers, service providers and ISVs discouraged by the amount of time and costs it would take to accomplish on their own.

Move more industry specific ISV workloads to Public Cloud – By default, IBM SoftLayer will essentially inherit VMware’s long list of “vendor certifications” to run industry specific ISV applications in a hybrid cloud environment. In the past, many ISVs did not specifically certify their applications across each unique Public Cloud environment such as AWS, Microsoft, Google, and SoftLayer. This new IBM and VMware partnership provides our customers with a unique advantage for running their critical ISV applications on IBM Cloud.

Generate more revenue by helping their SMB and Enterprise customers move to Public Cloud – If you are interested in reselling SoftLayer you can now extend and resell this VMware and Softlayer hybrid cloud offering to your SMB and enterprise customers. You will find significant value in this announcement for the same reasons stated above.

Is this an “exclusive” partnership?
The partnership between IBM and VMware is unique. VMware will continue to work with other cloud service providers but not with this level of integration, sales or marketing support including joint solutions design.

Additionally this kind of seamless VMware hybrid cloud is not available through AWS or Microsoft so there is a unique advantage for you as a service provider to join in collaboration with IBM.

For further information about this strategic alliance read here: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/49154.wss

Otherwise you are more than welcome to contact me for a dialogue on how your business can benefit from this collaboration.