Are Former Rivals Amazon and VMware Expanding Their Partnership?

Last fall, cloud giants Amazon Web Services (NASDAQ:AMZN) and VMware (NYSE:VMW) collectively announced that they had entered into a strategic partnership to “deliver a vSphere-based cloud service running on AWS.”
Now–roughly 9 months later–it’s reported that the companies may potentially expand that partnership to include software for corporate data centers, the Information reported on Monday (July 17).
According to the publication, should the two companies proceed, it would allegedly be the the first large-scale effort by Amazon Web Services to advance the software of its kind.

“AWS has become a big business over the past decade by persuading a myriad of corporate customers to use its “public cloud” servers for their computing needs,” the article states.
The Information goes on to write that the software could potentially make it easier for companies to better access public-cloud resources–such as Amazon Web Services–all the while storing some of that data on their own servers.  While the new software would be the first of its kind of Amazon (mentioned above), it would also give VMware the ability to service big companies that want a “hybrid-cloud approach.”
While the data-center software certainly sounds promising, CNBC and MarketWatch, among others, have reported that neither company has officially confirmed whether the software is in the works.
Announced in October of 2016, the initial Amazon Web Services and VMware partnership introduced the VMware Cloud on AWS service, to be powered by VMware Cloud Foundation.  The companies had targeted the middle of 2017 to launch the VMware virtualization software, but The Information allegedly reported it won’t be available until the end of the year, or early 2018.
That said, Mark Lohmeyer, cloud executive at VMware was quoted saying, “there will definitely be opportunities to create more integration points between VMware and AWS over time.”
At the close of trading on Monday, shares of Amazon increased slightly by 0.82 percent to $1,010.04, while VMware’s had increased slightly more–by 3.01 percent–to close at $91.05.
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Securities Disclosure: I, Jocelyn Aspa, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.