vCloud Suite 5.1 makes VMware's economics more palatable

VMWare's recently introduced vCloud Suite 5.1 -- an all-in-one virtualization suite which officially became available today -- will give rivals a run for the money.

VMware, which had been lambasted by competitors and even customers for its high pricing and complex licensing program, announced on Tuesday the availability of three editions -- enterprise, advanced and standard -- for a starting price of $4995 per processor.

That's hardly giving it away. But when you consider the breadth of products in the suite, and the elimination of the company's complex vRAM pricing, it makes VMware a lot more attractive in the eyes of the big guys and small to mid-sized businesses that have been looking at Microsoft and OpenStack as possibly alternatives.

The editions, first announced at VMWorld reently, include core virtualiation, management, security, integration, backup and networking services for a set price. Although VMware would only say pricing starts at roughly $5K per processor, CIOs are assured that there will be no more per-core or per VM fees or limits on the number of VMs. That makes the pricing more competitive and fairly transparent to customers.

The VMware vCloud Suite 5.1 includes VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus, VMware vCloud Director, VMware vCloud Connector, VMware vCloud Networking and Security, VMware vFabric Application Director, VMware vCenter Operations Management Suite and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

It will be interesting to see industry reaction to the value of the suite, particularly as a variety of OpenStack-based open source offerings from Rackspace, Piston, SUSE and Red Hat make their way into the marketplace of offerings.

VMware is the indisputed leader, pioneer, and safest choice in the virtualization market. Nevertheless, execs were wise to heed customer feedback and give in to pricing demands before rivals ate too much into their market share. Most market leaders give in too late.