But Chen doesn't expect VMware to be pushing customers to use OpenStack, VMware is more just supporting customers who've decided to use the open source code.

More complete support for ESX has been a desire for OpenStack customers, says Joshua McKentry of Piston Cloud. Now that VMware has extended initial support of vSphere in OpenStack, he expects there to be further integrations with the code. Herrod points out that the integration so far is around OpenStack supporting the ESX hypervisor, but not allowing vSphere to run OpenStack clouds.

VMware is in a way "sheathing the sword," after earlier comments from the company in which its cloud director Mathew Lodge equated OpenStack and other open source platforms as the ""

In addition to announcing the ESX support, Herrod also ran through VMware's other involvements in OpenStack, including Nicira's work in the virtual networking Quantum project, and the effort of integrating its Cloud Foundry platform as a service into OpenStack, which it has partnered with Piston Cloud on. VMware's RabbitMQ, an open source middleware-type application deployment project, is also used heavily within the OpenStack community, Herrod notes.

Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social collaboration. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.