VMware's vCloud Air to integrate Google's BigQuery analytics, Cloud Datastore, Cloud DNS, and Cloud Storage services
VMware And Google Cozy Up Dina Bass / Bloomberg Business : VMware Strikes Deal to Sell Google Cloud Services Its Customers Kevin McLaughlin / CRN : VMware, Google Teaming Up To Go After Microsoft's Enterprise Cloud Customers Charlie Osborne / ZDNet : VMware, Google connect to expand enterprise cloud offerings Jordan Novet / VentureBeat : VMware starts reselling Google cloud services
Context & Ripple Effects
In early 2015, VMware's vCloud Air was fighting for relevance against far larger public clouds, and this deal reframes it: instead of beating Google and Microsoft at their own game, VMware turns its enterprise sales channel into a reseller front for Google's BigQuery, Cloud Datastore, Cloud DNS, and Cloud Storage — coverage at the time framed it explicitly as a play for Microsoft's enterprise cloud customers. Months later, Google doubled down on the relationship by hiring VMware co-founder Diane Greene to run all of its cloud businesses.
The template proved durable: VMware replicated the structure with Amazon in a 2016 partnership bringing its infrastructure software to AWS, made that integration live by VMworld 2017, and by 2019 Google had graduated from renting VMware's channel to buying CloudSimple outright to run VMware workloads natively on Google Cloud. This article is the first data point in that arc.
First-order effects
- VMware's enterprise customer base gains direct access to Google analytics, storage, and DNS services through vCloud Air, giving Google an enterprise distribution channel it lacked while aiming the bundle squarely at Microsoft's Azure enterprise accounts.
- vCloud Air pivots from standalone cloud provider to aggregation layer: VMware monetizes its installed base and relationships rather than its own data-center capacity.
Second-order effects
- The resell-the-hyperscaler model validates itself fast — VMware signs the same structure with AWS a year later, making hyperscaler partnerships, not vCloud Air's own buildout, the centerpiece of its cloud strategy.
- Microsoft, the named target in the coverage, now faces VMware's enterprise channel being pointed against its own cloud accounts, intensifying pressure on its hybrid-cloud pitch.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — and the corpus suggests it did — hyperscalers stop renting VMware's bridge and start owning it, culminating in Google's acquisition of CloudSimple to run VMware workloads directly on GCP.
- Hybrid cloud hardens into a distribution strategy for public clouds generally, with VMware's leverage peaking as the gatekeeper and eroding as its partners internalize the connection.
The trend: Public clouds have shifted from competing with VMware head-on to distributing through — and ultimately acquiring — the bridge into enterprise VMware estates.