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Alibaba takes VMware where AWS and Microsoft don't – behind the Great Firewall

Only in China ‘for the moment’ which leaves the world to conquer

VMware’s partnership with Alibaba Cloud has borne fruit behind the Great Firewall

The companies in late 2018 announced an alliance that aspired to deliver VMware’s stack running in Alibaba’s cloud. The aim was to let users can treat Alibaba as a just-about-IaaS version of their Virtzilla-powered on-premises rigs.

Alibaba threw the switch on the service yesterday across all nine of its mainland China regions and its sole site in the Hong Kong Special Administrative region.

The service isn’t available in the 11 Alibaba’s regions outside China “at the moment”. However they are available to users anywhere who choose to run in the China regions, so it’s conceivable for companies from outside China to use VMware-on-Alibaba to host the apps they need behind the Great Firewall.

China’s government is increasingly sending local businesses signals that buying home-grown tech is the right thing to do for their businesses and the nation. China’s hyperscale clouds have also developed their own hybrid cloud offerings.

VMware’s therefore done well to not just get a foot in the door but win a place in China’s biggest cloud – doubly so given that AWS, IBM and Azure don’t offer Virtzilla-powered hybrid clouds in the Middle Kingdom. ®

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