Although not officially the first day of the main VMworld event it saw a number of different activities take place such as the VMware Partner ‘General Sessions’ and the ‘Technology Exchange’ for the developer community.

Along with the ‘VMware Go’ announcement today that I posted about here other main announcement for the day was the release of the VMware vCloud API (currently in Alpha (0.8) release) beta programme.

The purpose of the vCloud API is to provide a method in which to interact (ie: ‘consume or provide’) resources in the ‘vCloud’.  The API will enable the upload, download, instantiation, deployment and operation of vApps, networks and Virtual Datacenters. Good stuff!

If this is something that sounds like it may be of interest then definitely have a read of the vCloud API FAQ here as it will almost certainly answers most questions that you will no doubt have at this time.

One line that stood out for me (and it may be absolutely nothing but my over active imagination) in the FAQ is:

“How can enterprises use the API?

The vCloud API enables enterprises to build internal clouds based on the VMware technology stack. They can extend their workflow automation and provisioning to make use of vCloud services that implement the vCloud API.”

So with a vCloud API being announced and a step closer to becoming reality is this paving the way for VMware to announce that they will be entering the ‘Cloud Services’ arena along with the likes of Amazon (EC2) and Microsoft (Azure)?  Could these ‘vCloud services’ be their own?  There has been some speculation for months now that this will happen but as yet no real hard evidence to confirm that this is their intention.  It may just purely be a case that with the release of the vCloud API some select VMware partners may start to offer this public Cloud type offering to others.

More information on the API can be found here on the ‘VMware Developer – vCloud API’ page (VMware Communities site).

And finally here is a brief video from Akhil S (sorry couldn’t catch his surname), Senior Product Manager for vCloud Application and Virtual Appliances.  He doesn’t go into any detail on the API though he does ask for feedback and for people to use and become part of the API beta programme – which you can express your interest to be part of at the bottom of the FAQ page here.

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