Stefan Mileschin

Troubled hardware maker Dell has become one of the first high profile companies to dump its public cloud plans.

The company said that it will not invest in its OpenStack and VMware-based cloud services for public cloud.

In a press release, it said: "Sales of Dell's current in-house multi-tenant public cloud IaaS will be discontinued in the US in favor of best-in-class partner offerings."

Basically, instead of offering its own public cloud, Dell will sell through partners like Joyent, ScaleMatrix and ZeroLag.

One of the weird things about this, according to IT World, is that none of its partners operate OpenStack. ZeroLag uses VMware, Joyent's cloud is proprietary. ScaleMatrix offers "OpenStack hosting" which is not the same as a public cloud.

The Dell spokesperson said the company planned to continue offering OpenStack public cloud services through its partners, although it is not clear how this can be.

Dell also still plans to offer private cloud products and services, based on OpenStack. Dell has also promised to invest and contribute to the OpenStack community and will continue to offer and expand Dell OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution for private cloud.

The move is an admission that Dell has had a tough time getting its public cloud services off the ground. Last year it delayed the launch of its OpenStack cloud for another year, claiming that it wanted the platform to mature.

However, the move by Dell will upset the OpenStack community and give a reason for Amazon Web Services public cloud executives to open the champers. It is looking like it will take a lot of money to create a public cloud offering that competes and Dell just does not have the readies.

http://news.techeye.net/software/del...s-public-cloud