VMware have revamped their Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

The whats new page details the enhanced account management and improved content. There is now also user generated content.

Details of this update first surfaced back in October 2008.

Back in December 2008 I put forward the view the Virtual Appliances are important for VMware in the SaaS cloud space.

The challenge for VMware here as well as the opportunity is to capture some of this space with Virtual Appliances. If a mature set of Virtual Appliances can be available through the market place; if these can be downloaded from within the management environment painlessly; and if they can not only describe their service levels, backup and disaster recovery requirements (vApps) but also implement them automatically (AppSpeed, Data Recovery Appliance, SRM) VMware could be onto a good slice of this pie. Put your credit card in, download the service and run it locally in your own security model, owning the data. You can even still have the provider maintain the application as part of a maintenance agreement. Most of the benefits of SaaS without many of the current concerns and limits. VMware need to lead by example here.

Hence its great to see this update released. Now VMware need to encourage more developers and and ISVs to produce high quality Appliances to deliver a SaaS layer on top of VDC-OS, giving customers the choice and flexibility of where to execute their workloads.

Rodos