VMware's vDare: Build more complexity and silos, or virtualize more

I'm with Enrico on this. Reinventing the "System Center single installer" isn't a hybrid cloud. Actually having management products that aren't a miserable bitch to install, configure, maintain and support is a really big part of it.

VMware still has a the mindset of an infrastructure supplier. They make pieces of infrastructure and they expect you to get a whole bunch of certifications and read a 400-page user manual.

Oh, and pay for the lot of it like every single bit was made out of iridium.

This strategy would work if the only players on the table were VMware, Microsoft and Amazon. It would work if Enterprise IT spend were still growing at 8% year on year. None of this is true.

Multiple players - big and small - have figured out that if you aren't selling "cloud in a can" you're already dead, and you don't even understand why. Over the next 12-18 months, they'll be cranking these out. The endgame machines are coming.

What's more important: those competitors are pricing their wares for the mass market. And - lo and behold - the SMB and midmarket space, which already make up around 60% of IT spend - are the areas where IT spend it growing near the double digits year on year.

Hyperconvergence was the future seven years ago. Today, it's just another feature. It's not even a product.

The future - tomorrow's technology - is made up of turnkey cloud-in-a-can. Not for the cost of your first born. Not requiring a room of PhDs to make go. But for commodity pricing and with an ease of use rivaling Amazon itself.

The datacenter was VMware's to lose. And, quite frankly, they haven't even shown up to be counted.