David Brent's office to host VMware's hybrid cloud

VMware has made good in its promise to bring its vCloud Hybrid Service (VCHS) to blighty, announcing that Slough will be the site for its first European service.

The Register understands VMware has not built its own bit barn in that fair city, but will instead reside within Savvis' local facility. Savvis is in the process of adding 35,000 square feet of data centre space and 2.4 MW of electrical capacity to power it, meaning there's plenty of room for VMware and its clients to grow into.

VMware has also thrown the switch for new VCHS sites in Santa Clara, California, and Sterling, Virginia.

The Slough site will offer private beta testing for the remainder of 2013 before opening its doors to all and sundry some time in 2014's first quarter.

The announcements mean VMware's plans for VCHS look to be on track. The Santa Clara and Sterling sites were both touted back in August at Vmworld USA, as was partnership with Savvis for expansion into Europe. Breathing life into that partnership shows VMware is on track with its plan to offer customers a private cloud spanning on-premises machines and an elastic cloud.

VMware has argued vigorously that plenty of organisations, especially highly-regulated organisations, value homogeneity and demand more granular control of their clouds than is possible when using the likes of Amazon Web Services. Some feel that argument is more than a bit self serving, as a homogenous hybrid cloud increases the chances of lock-in by deepening incumbency.

Whatever the merits of VMware's vision, partnering with Savvis means it saves the few hundred million dollars required to build its own bit barns, all while gaining the chance to charge for cloudy licences of its many wares on premises and in the cloud.

David Brent would love to be the one who thought of that. ®