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In VMworld Europe 2009, VMware CEO, Paul Maritz, announced the technological roadmap for their new Virtual Data Center OS (VDC-OS) and vCloud API to enable interoperability across Clouds. Slowly, but steadily, enterprises are warming to Cloud Computing by jumping into what are called as Private Clouds, a cloud like architecture inside of the enterprise datacenters. This announcement bodes well for further proliferation of Cloud Computing adaption by the enterprise community.

When transitioning from the complex infrastructure of datacenters to dynamic but simple private cloud architectures, a new substrate layer is needed. This new layer acts like an OS pooling all computing resources inside the enterprises including servers, storage, etc.. VMware’s upcoming VDC-OS will act as this new substrate layers for the private clouds.

They also built upon their vCloud initiative announcement from VMWorld Las Vegas 2008, enabling a federation between the internal private clouds and external public clouds. VMware is working closely with major cloud infrastructure service providers like Savvis, Terremark, etc. to offer vCloud initiatives. Enterprises can now tap into the utility computing resources from these providers with the help of VMware’s vCloud initiative whenever there is a need for more computing resources. The whole integration between the internal and external cloud infrastructure is made seamless. In short, vCloud’s API allows programmatic access to private cloud resources and support the delivery of services and applications that leverage and extend private clouds.

In fact, during VMWorld Europe 2009 event, cloud infrastructure company like Engine Yard will be demonstrating their new services built on top of vCloud API. This API allows companies like Engine Yard to offer scalable, elastic infrastructure needed for Web 2.0 companies and enterprises.

VMware is also trying to achieve open standards based interoperability between various cloud infrastructure providers. The release of vCloud API is a step in this direction.