VMware speaks out about PayPal future

Online payment provider PayPal insists it has no plans to "rip and replace" VMware's software from its servers.

As reported by IT Pro yesterday, an IT consultancy recently claimed PayPal was planning to replace VMware on 80,000 of its servers with an open source alternative from OpenStack.

The claims were originally made in an article on Business Insider, and have since been played down by the CEO of the consultancy involved.

However, that hasn't stopped VMware's Bogomil Balkansky, senior vice president of the firm's cloud infrastructure platform, from speaking out about the case in a blog post.

In it, he reiterates VMware's commitment to supporting heterogeneous cloud environments (like PayPal's) that feature a range of products from different providers

"We engage across a rich ecosystem of vendors and open source solutions to give our customers the choice and flexibility they need to empower their people and their organisations," he said.

"To be clear, customers don't want their vendors at war, they want them focused on their success."

Nat Rajesh Natarajan, vice president of platform engineering and operations at PayPal, is also quoted on the blog, and uses it to reiterate his firm's ongoing commitment to VMware.

"Our initiative with OpenStack is intended to enable agility innovation and choice," he said.

"We're not interested in rip and replace'...[VMware] are a valued PayPal partner and we intend to continue leveraging their core strengths in our cutting edge cloud," he added.