This is good. OpenStack is genuinely open and having consistent ways of moving data and config in an out of any configuration is a great step forward.
The question is why VMware - the biggest player in the corporate VM space - would do this. They have great lock-in already so this is a commercially questionable decision. They don't have a strong challenger in the place where virtualization makes money so it will be interesting to see where they take it.
I'd be more inclined to recommend VMWare for our in-office needs if I can conveniently move VMs off to an OpenStack supporting public cloud. VMWare's offerings are good enough to compete with any private cloud out there but not having any interoperability with what seems like the future of the open cloud could hurt them.
I didn't see this coming. Given their existing userbase, my take is that this is more about "hedging your bets" than anything else. I am still very skeptical that a consortium-led organization is going to be able to effectively compete with Amazon but the jury is still out. We live in interesting times :)
The question is why VMware - the biggest player in the corporate VM space - would do this. They have great lock-in already so this is a commercially questionable decision. They don't have a strong challenger in the place where virtualization makes money so it will be interesting to see where they take it.