Chris points out that many of the comparisons made between offerings are made on a simple, two-dimensional basis. The checkbox approach makes it seem that a long list of vendors can "do it", but you have no context as to "how" or "how painfully" or "how costly" until you dig deeper.
He makes a few recommendations that you should employ when evaluating any vendor (including VMware) making claims of some extraordinary utopia:
- Integrations with 3rd parties. How ... specifically? Not just that it is supported, but how is it supported?
- 3rd party software licensing. Does the license follow the VM?
- Support for preferred vendors. Are all of your preferred vendors supported? How well? How easy is this? Is there a single solution exchange where you can get the latest and greatest?
- APIs. How are they accessed? Native? Proprietary? How easy/difficult is it to create or recreate an API?
- Common management solutions. Same management tools across internal DC and public? Is this seamless? What if you change public providers? Will you need new management toolsets?
- Security policies. Consistent across the hybrid cloud?
- Network, storage and identity management. Are there persistent settings, policies, functions, APIs, etc.?
- Logging/Auditing. Can you tell who did what, when, why? Does this log data integrate with management toolsets?
- DR. How quick to recover? What about configuration drift?
So much more to consider. When determining reality and - more importantly - true Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), there is simply a lot to think through. Back to a recommendation that you lean on a trusted vendor and/or partner who has "been there, done that" many, many times. There are few that can claim this with a straight face.
In summary: Push back the "silver bullet" statements, peel back more layers of the onion ... save yourself a lot of time, cost and headache.
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