Small in Japan: Hitachi creates its own (modest) cloud
Hitachi has taken a modest step towards becoming a public cloud provider, with the launch of a VMware-powered cloud in Japan thatThe Japanese giant has styled the service a"sovereign cloud" – a term that VMware introduced to distinguish some of its 4,000-plus partners that operate small clouds and can attest to their operations being subject to privacy laws and governance structures within the nation in which they operate.
Public cloud heavyweights AWS, Azure, Google, Oracle, IBM, and Alibaba also offer VMware-powered clouds, at hyperscale. But some organizations worry that their US or Chinese roots make them vulnerable to laws that might allow Washington or Beijing to exercise extraterritorial oversight. Virtzilla therefore suggests sovereign clouds running its wares as a fine way for its customers to extend into hybrid clouds, or a pure-play cloud. Buyers of such clouds know that sovereign cloud providers can't match hyperscalers for elasticity but, as they require surety that using any cloud won't expose them to exotic legal entanglements, are happy to get as much of the cloud experience as possible.