Обмен мнениями по поводу фундаментальных отличий VMware vCloud vs. Microsoft Azure опубликован в WindowsIt Pro (краткий обзор по основным платформам облачных вычислений можно также посмотреть здесь):

When asked to compare VMware vCloud product roadmap with Microsoft’s Windows Azure strategy, Chu highlights three areas that he believes Windows Azure will fall short, including Microsoft’s new role as a service provider, incompatibility with existing applications based on LAMP technology, and that Windows Azure is still months — if not years — away from being a tangible product.

"With vCloud, we don’t become a service provider," says Chu. "Microsoft is stepping over the line, and now intends to compete directly against some of their [hosting and service provider] partners." By comparison, Chu argues that vCloud is a platform that is supported by a broad range of third-party service providers, including British Telecom, Saavis, Rackspace, Terremark, and others.

The second failing of Windows Azure Chu sees is the lack of support for applications and platforms that aren’t based on the .NET framework. "[With vCloud] we’re looking to support a broad range of existing applications…without forcing customers to rewrite applications, or to only have certain kinds of apps, "says Chu. "VMware’s products are already providing a platform that people are using to deploy internal clouds, and that our partners are already using to create external clouds."

Gartner Analyst Thomas Bittman agrees, writing in his blog that the need for applications to be rewritten or redeveloped to support Windows Azure could be a deal-breaker for some enterprises:

But, Azure doesn’t support existing applications – applications need to be targeted originally for Azure. With Azure, sourcing is not a runtime operations decision, it is an application design decision. The software and/or services decision is kinda hardwired at design time, which is unfortunate, and means that enterprises will need to look elsewhere for solutions to cloudsource some of their computing requirements.

That leads to Chu’s final point. According to Chu, VMware’s vCloud and VDC-OS will eventually allow customers and service providers to federate across internal and external clouds to make a "seamless IT infrastructure using a common framework", and that a good portion of the technology required for that transition is already in use by VMware customers in the form of ESX Server and VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3). "From our standpoint, we have proven technology that is already being used for internal clouds…the core [technology platform] is already there."

На мой взгляд пока преждевременно делать какие-то глобальные выводы, т.к. обе платформы пока существуют больше на бумаге. Тем не менее уже ясно, что Microsoft, что бы не остаться в стороне от прогресса, сделала очередной большой шаг в сторону конкуренции со своими партнерами, предоставляющими услуги хостинга. VMware действует прямо противоположным образом, предоставляя платформу облачного хостинга как раз этим партнерам. Следующий год обещает быть интересным в плане понимания какая бизнес-модель является более эффективной.

Предвосхищая многие вопросы из области, а когда VMware в России и СНГ начнет заниматься рынком хостинга и предоставит конкретную программу для поставщиков услуг, скажу, что пока о деталях говорить рано, но мы работаем в этом направлении J

А вы что думаете? Оно вам надо?J 

VMware: Windows Azure More Smoke than Cloud