QTS buys out VMware portion of government cloud offering
By
Nick Wakeman
Now that it is the sole proprietor of its VMware cloud service offering, QTS is planning investments to make the platform even more appealing.
It was a little over two years ago that Carpathia and VMware joined forces to offer a government cloud service that allowed agencies to manage their hybrid cloud environments.
But a lot has happened since then. Carpathia was acquired by QTS in 2015 and VMware, through its ownership by EMC, has now become part of Dell Technologies.
Now, there's another change: QTS is buying the cloud service formerly known as VMware vCloud Government powered by Carpathia and rebranding it simply as QTS Government Cloud.
VMware will continue to be the software that powers the offering, and the two companies will continue to be aligned closely together, QTS executives told me.
The change in ownership structure will free VMware from the responsibility of trying to sell a service and allow it to keep its focus in the government market “on what they are really good at, software,” said Dan Bennewitz, chief operating officer of sales and marketing for QTS.
VMware will continue to market and sell the service, but responsibility for developing the infrastructure and expanding its capabilities will fall to QTS, he said.
“Our partnership remains strong; we will still be tied to the hip with VMware,” said Tim Burke, QTS federal cloud manager.
Financial terms of the asset purchase were not disclosed.
Government customers should not see a major change. They will still have access to the QTS cloud infrastructure and all of the VMware products powering it, Bennewitz said.
But the plan moving forward is to invest and make the platform more powerful. For example, Bennewitz said the underlying network connections will be made larger so data can move more quickly between QTS facilities around the country and between QTS and customer sites.
This is important as more agencies develop hybrid cloud infrastructures that incorporate public and private clouds and agency data centers.
QTS already is FedRAMP compliant and is authorized to host Defense Department Impact Level 2 workloads.
“We are going to invest in the platform and build more capabilities in this market with our reputation for high-level customer service,” he said.
As the sole proprietor so to speak, QTS will be able to expand the sales channel for the service and involve more players such as systems integrators as partners, Bennewitz said.
In many ways, QTS is moving from being a subcontractor to VMware to being the prime, and the name change reflects that.