VMware estimated that a total of 15 IDC partners in Taiwan will have joined the VMware Cloud Provider Program (VCPP) by the end of this year. Their goal for the next 2 to 3 years is 30 to 50 partners.
VMware’s VCPP (VMware Cloud Provider Program), formerly known as vCAN (vCloud Air Network partnership program), currently has over 4,300 providers in over 110 countries around the globe. It offers the partners public cloud and hybrid cloud services by charging on a monthly basis. Barry Chen, the General Manager of VMware Taiwan, indicated that there are already 10 VCPP partners in Taiwan including FarEasTone, Digicentre, and Genesis Technology. VMware Taiwan estimated that a total of 15 IDC companies in Taiwan will have joined VCPP by the end of this year, and the goal for the next 2 to 3 years is “30 to 50 partners,” said Chen.
In December last year, VMware Taiwan announced its partnership with eASPNet. eASPNet Chairperson Jackson Wu expressed last year that the hybrid cloud services were estimated to be tested in the first quarter of 2017, and they “hope to find companies for testing in the second quarter, and acquire clients in the third quarter.” And indeed, eASPNet made the services go live in the second half of 2017, which then attracted a renowned restaurant, Din Tai Fung. eASPNet’s Chairperson Jackson Wu said that their cooperation with VMware has transformed existing data centers to modernized cloud data centers. The GWS-Cloud Disaster Recovery (DR) solution, one of the Global Web Service solutions (based on the IaaS cloud platform) offered by eASPNet, is a good example. This solution incorporates a cloud data center of high reliability and availability, and adopts VMware DR technologies to simplify the work required during disaster recovery. Besides working with VMware, eASPNet has partnered up with numerous telecom companies. In the past, enterprise users required a physical interface to access the resources of telecom companies. Now that eASPNet has implemented NSX, “virtualizing all the Internet resources” said eASPNet CTO Huang Wei-Hsiou, allowing the companies who subscribe to eASPNet virtual machines and DR services to utilize resources of different telecom companies simultaneously. “
Huang also indicated that their company encourages enterprise users to relocate physical data centers onto the virtual cloud to reduce hardware and software maintenance work. And since eASPNet started partnership with VMware, its subscribed services from VMware have all gone live. Huang raised an example of DR services, in which enterprise users demand uninterrupted services, and have their services run on the public cloud for backup. Traditionally, a backup data center requires a routine maintenance cost, even if there is no accidents. But eASPNet’s charging program is flexible: It only charges a daily fee in case of a system malfunction, where users’ services have been relocated to the eASPNet backup data center. “Only a basic and routine maintenance fee is charged, just like insurance payments.”
Meanwhile, existing enterprise users authorized by VMware shall pay VMware license fees based on the purchased number of vCPUs. However, if they join the VCPP, they only need to pay a regular subscription fee according to their usage amount of the infrastructure resources, for instance, the number of times the virtual machines have been turned on, or the amount of the memory that has been used. “That is, user who use VMware’s infrastructures in the public cloud will be charged under the payment of public cloud.”
Huang also indicated that companies who have adopted eASPNet services such as Din Tai Fung did not have a complete protection and backup for its data. That is why Din Tai Fung asked eASPNet for help, in order to collect and consolidate all the scattered data for its headquarters, and back up the information to the cloud. “To ensure that all the data are secured.” Moreover, Huang said that Din Tai Fung hopes to have uninterrupted application services, and therefore they chose the DR service on top of backing up the data to replicate their virtual machines that run important programs. If one day the system at an operation site has gone wrong, the applications services can still continue by using the backup stored in eASPNet’s data center. Moving forward, Din Tai Fung hopes to take advantage of the data collected through its operation. “These data have great potential to help Din Tai Fun with future strategic planning.”
Meanwhile, container technology is another focus for many companies. Huang indicated that eASPNet is currently working on whether container technology could become one of its product services. However, he pointed out that for companies that eASPNet have contacted, the ratio of using containers in an official environment is low. “Container technology so far is mostly used in the development or testing environment.” He also explained that as a cloud service provider, eASPNet will not simply keep seeking after the latest technology, such as software-defined networking, already proposed by Cisco and Juniper. “As a service provider, we want to offer stable platforms”. Hence, eASPNet decided to partner with VMware last year to have SDDC solution implemented to reinforce their resources.
