VMware Takes Over Mozy For EMC To Add Scale To vSphere Cloud Tech

VMware is taking over operations of storage cloud provider Mozy from parent company EMC, and says the move will help improve the technology of its vSphere cloud computing platform and not compete against partners using vSphere to launch their own clouds

VMware unveiled the move in a Monday blog post by Steve Herrod, CTO and R&D senior vice president, who wrote that VMware has hired the Mozy team and acquired some of its assets from EMC.

Storage giant is the parent company of VMware, which it acquired in late 2003.

EMC also acquired Mozy, a provider of consumer and business cloud storage, in 2007.

For VMware, operating its own cloud is a big change.

VMware has been promoting its vSphere technology as a common platform for cloud services providers that allow customers to choose from and simultaneously use multiple clouds for their operations.

A VMware spokesperson said the company will operate Mozy as a way to help VMware understand how to build cloud scale into vSphere, and that it will not be competing with other cloud providers or favor Mozy in terms of VMware technology developments.

The spokesperson also said that VMware is not acquiring Mozy. Instead, Mozy is still generating revenue for parent EMC, while VMware is acting more like an outsourced operator for the storage cloud provider.

Herrod, in his blog, wrote that VMware will operate Mozy for EMC as a way to ramp up its ability to help cloud computing partners better scale their operations to the cloud.

"Over the past 5 years, Mozy has built one of the best examples of a globally distributed, large-scale cloud offering. We believe that, by being directly engaged with the delivery of such a service, VMware will further ramp our own cloud-related learning and accelerate new IP, scale, and capabilities into the products that we provide to our customers and public cloud partners," Herrod wrote.

According to Herrod, Mozy has over 1 million users, 70,000 business customers, and data centers storing over 70 petabytes of data, all while keeping backup a simple operation, all while providing security for that data.

"Mozy has taken the base technology that keeps you from losing your data and turned it into a scalable, fail-safe way of building out a collection of highly-automated datacenters with strong security and 24/7 operations fronted by elegant, user interfaces across many client types. This is the foundational architecture for the many cloud-based services being delivered today," he wrote.

For VMware, operating Mozy will also help it do more to serve SMB customers as they look for ways to access cloud computing, Herrod wrote.

"It’s clear that organizations of this size (with little or no IT staff) are moving even more rapidly to adopt IT services via the public cloud. We’ll make sure that these customers have easy access to the Mozy back-up service as well as other related data services to come," he wrote.

Charlotte Yarkoni, COO of Mozy, wrote in a blog post that VMware will continue the full portfolio of Mozy services while staff from both companies integrate long-term development plans for building and delivering hybrid cloud solutions.

"VMware and Mozy share a vision for how cloud computing will transform IT and help businesses achieve greater agility. By joining forces, we believe we can accelerate the development of offerings that businesses are looking for," Yarkoni wrote.

Next: No Change In Services, But Possibly More Integration

Russ Stockdale, CMO and vice president of product management for Mozy, said that Mozy customers will not see any changes in the services.

However, Stockdale said, Mozy will have the opportunity to offer more services more suited to VMware's virtualization technology.

"For example, we will look at backing up data snapshots from vSphere," he said. "Beyond that, it's something we'll be investigating in the months to come."

There's another reason the move to VMware is good, Stockdale said. "Culturally, we're both West Coast software companies," he said. "We both have a common view of clouds and hybrid clouds. And we could see having an integrated road map over time."