VMware Announces General Availability of vCloud Air in Germany

MUNICH, GERMANY--(Marketwired - March 16, 2015) - VMware, Inc. (VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the expansion of VMware vCloud® Air™ in Europe with the general availability of service in Frankfurt, Germany.

Complementing VMware's UK location and the vCloud Air® Network™ of service providers, the new VMware-operated German data center provides customers with a Central European location that helps to address German and EU compliance and data protection regulations, while enabling them to take advantage of VMware's enterprise-class cloud.

"The continued expansion of VMware vCloud Air in Central Europe marks another major milestone in the global build out of our hybrid cloud service, bringing benefits to our customers through fast and easy access to the public cloud while reducing operating costs and providing compliance with local data protection regulations," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware. "VMware's new Frankfurt service location enables IT teams, developers and lines of business to take full advantage of an enterprise-class public cloud service that is local and fully compliant with local data protection regulations."

"We know that when it comes to the cloud, trust remains the ultimate human currency," said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP SE. "I congratulate VMware on the expansion of vCloud Air in Europe and I'm pleased that SAP is a proud partner and user of VMware solutions. VMware's commitment to the German marketplace creates a compelling opportunity for customers to leverage hybrid cloud services in support of a business growth agenda."

Hybrid Cloud Strategy is Business Critical
A recent IDC studyi commissioned by VMware revealed that a majority of IT decision makers in Germany (67 percent) describe their organization's current or planned cloud strategy as hybrid.

VMware vCloud Air can integrate seamlessly with a company's current IT infrastructure, giving the ease and flexibility to extend applications into the public cloud as and when additional capacity is needed. The resulting hybrid cloud is compatible with existing enterprise applications, and also makes it easy to build new cloud-native applications, delivering businesses greater agility and efficiency in a more secure, reliable and compliant manner. IT departments can view, manage and operate this "best of both worlds" cloud environment in a unified way using the VMware vSphere® platform they already know and trust.

The same study also revealed that 65 percent of the IT decision makers in Germany consider a hybrid cloud environment as critical in helping their organization achieve its business goals and compete effectively in 2020.