VMware Shows Strength As Private Cloud Platform Provider

A survey of more than 100 executives who purchased or are planning to purchase cloud services showed that VMware was the preferred cloud platform by 34 percent.

Following VMware in popularity were OpenStack, the open-source platform pioneered by Rackspace, at 14 percent; IBM's SmartCloud platform at 12 percent; the Citrix CloudStack platform at 9 percent; VCE, the joint venture between Cisco and EMC with funding from Intel and VMware, at 4 percent; and Eucalyptus at 3 percent.

A significant portion of the respondents -- 25 percent -- said they had no preference.

The overall study, by Everest Group and Cloud Connect and called "Enterprise Cloud Adoption Survey - Results," questioned 347 executives from enterprise cloud buyers, cloud service providers and cloud consultants, with 104 executives responding to the question on cloud platform preference.

[Related: This Week In The Cloud: Rackspace Builds OpenStack, Private Cloud, CA Teams With Logicalis ]

VMware also garnered the most support as the preferred provider of virtualization technology for businesses using or planning on using cloud platforms.

VMware was preferred by 47 percent of 95 executives who responded, with Microsoft preferred by 18 percent, Citrix Xen-based technology preferred by 9 percent and KVM Linux-based technology preferred by 6 percent.

Those indicating no preference totaled 19 percent.

Ross Tisnovsky, senior vice president of research for Everest Group, said the strong popularity of VMware as a cloud platform provider and as a virtualization vendor was at least in part due to its status as a first mover in the development of virtualization and in virtualization's key role in enabling cloud hosting.

"VMware was one of the early entrants into this market," Tisnovsky said. "It all started with virtualization."

However, he cautioned that cloud computing is still in its early stages and subject to change.

"The whole [cloud] market is still quite nascent," Tisnovsky said. "The jury is out. There are new standards emerging."

Cloud Connect, which is affiliated with UBM TechWeb, will feature the survey at its conference in Chicago, Sept. 10-12, 2012. UBM is the parent company of CRN.

PUBLISHED AUG. 17, 2012