Is VMware Integrated OpenStack just a development tool?

Is VMware Integrated OpenStack mainly a tool to help developers get their applications pushed into production, or will some of the functionality in OpenStack complement -- or compete with -- VMware's vCloud Automation Center product at some point?

At VMworld 2014, VMware announced the beta of VMware Integrated OpenStack (VIO), the company's attempt to give administrators a way to use their familiar vSphere environments to build a private cloud based on OpenStack. VMware said it plans to take OpenStack releases and harden them to ensure they perform properly in vSphere before delivering it to customers. Enterprises using VIO will then get support from VMware if issues with VIO crop up or assistance is needed with patches or upgrades.

In a session at VMworld 2014 entitled "Why OpenStack runs best with the vCloud Suite," with Arvind Soni, a senior product manager at VMware, and Laurence Vandeyar, a senior systems manager for TradeStation, people were curious about whether VMware plans to exploit the full suite of OpenStack services and use it for management rather than just using it as a developer tool.

"Think of your infrastructure as a highway and there are multiple onramps; vCAC is one onramp and OpenStack is another onramp," Soni said.. "So your developer workloads can come through OpenStack. That same developer can create a blueprint in vCAC; I can take that blueprint and roll it out to production."

"The goal with vCAC is broader in scope," he continued. "VCAC wants to orchestrate multiple endpoints underneath OpenStack. [It] provides what we call a cloud management and an application automation layer. There are some other products out there in the market that do it on top of OpenStack. One angle would be to bring vCAC features such as application lifecycle, orchestration and those things into the OpenStack environment from there. There is a lot of synergy and complementary aspects that we can exploit that are currently missing in OpenStack."