VMware has announced it will be taking over the day to day operations at Mozy, a fellow EMC subsidiary. This moves VMware into being a true cloud service provider.
VMware continues its march towards dominating the cloud today with its “acquisition” of Mozy. Calling it an acquisition is tough, since EMC technically owns both companies, but that is the basic gist of the announcement. VMware will take a direct hand in day-to-day operations of Mozy, learning from Mozy’s infrastructure to further VMware’s own cloud offerings.
VMware’s announcement is most geared toward the SMB market, as that is where “IT-as-a-service” and more specifically cloud-based services have taken a firm root. Many SMBs have little-to-no IT staff, and so using the cloud eases IT staffing requirements. VMware claims they’ve brought on over 50,000 customers in the last year, with the majority being in the SMB class through the VMware Go product line.
VMware plans to continue pushing Mozy’s individual services as VMware’s own cloud offerings begin to take advantage of Mozy’s large-scale cloud. Specific items called out by VMware include using Mozy’s data compression, synchronization, client integration, and analytic tools to bolster VMware’s existing and soon-to-be existing products. This is well in line with VMware’s goals of providing an end-to-end cloud experience for its customers, as VMware needs to scale up and be agile with fluctuating demands.
The full announcement is available on VMware’s Executive Blog with a similar ammouncement from Mozy’s COO on the Mozy blog.