Amazon Web Services will be providing the ability to export VMware virtual machines in addition to an import features that it announced last week.
According to the AWS Web site, exporting will be available to common image formats.
The ability to export VMware images is a welcome one. The lack of an export features has been the source of some criticism over the past week.
It appears at least that AWS did listen to what people had to say.
It also shows how important the VMware installed base is for AWS. VMware dominates the server virtualization market. AWS recognizes that many of those customers will want to move to the cloud. AWS wants those customers to move to its service.
To make a dent in the market, AWS needs to gain the trust of the enterprise customer. To do that, it’s a must to offer the capability to export virtual machines.
But isn’t exporting data a must for the cloud overall? Don’t we need to make this a standard way of doing business?
Exporting data should be a common place capability for cloud computing customers. Those that do provide the capability will be rewarded. Customers want the ability to export data. They will turn to the providers that offer that option.
