If VMware's membership in OpenStack lives up to its potential, organizations might be able to expect a more interoperable cloud infrastructure layer to emerge.
it's easy to move virtual machines from one private data center to another using VMware management tools, but VM mobility in the cloud is much more difficult.
VMware's membership in OpenStack could make such VM portability easier; for instance, OpenStack has a specification for object storage in the cloud.
VM mobility between private and public data centers, possibly for disaster recovery or avoidance, could become easier if VMware were to allow users to map drives within OpenStack the same way they would an iSCSI device or Fibre Channel LUN, Nelson said.
VMware contributions to OpenStack could also improve cloud bursting, the process of adding public cloud capacity to a private data center in response to a short-term need, said Carl Perry, cloud architect with Dreamhost, an OpenStack-based cloud service provider and member of the foundation.