Amid all of the talk of Windows Server 2012 and the coming release of Hyper-V, it can get awfully confusing about what is actually here today and what is coming in the future. Well, let’s clear that up a bit.

SOME TIME IN THE FUTURE: General availability of Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V.

SOME TIME IN THE FURTHER FUTURE: A release of System Center 2012 that will support all of the new features in Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V.

TODAY: As part of the Cloud Computing World Forum being held in London this week, VMware vSphere 5 was selected Best Virtualization Solution in the 2012 Cloud Computing World Series. Like the many other awards won by vSphere over the years, this award helps validate vSphere as the market-leading, most proven and trusted virtualization platform available.

TODAY: Real customers are running vSphere 5 in production. For example:

• The Arizona Department of Economic Security reduced IT labor costs by $280,000 while improving their ability to fulfill IT requests.
• YHMAN Limited, a joint venture company of eight universities, saves £160,000 in OPEX per year while also reducing their datacenter carbon footprint.
• LeasePlan, the world’s leading fleet and vehicle management company, improves application performance through ongoing load balancing with Storage DRS—a feature unique to vSphere 5.

TODAY: Real customers, representing various industries and company sizes, are running real private, public, and hybrid clouds on vSphere and vCloud Director.

	Ducati Runs Their Private Cloud on VMware: “Private cloud is already a reality in Ducati. Over our private cloud, we supply services to all our commercial subsidiaries. We supply services to our assembly plant in Thailand or to our racing team at racing venues. So private cloud is already a reality.” –Daniel Bellini, CIO, Ducati Motor Holding
	Charles River Labs Deploys a Business-Critical App in a VMware Hybrid Cloud: “I see Cloud being key to our overall strategy moving forward. The days of us investing heavily all of our capital into building hardware and infrastructure are past now. With the options that are available now from cloud partners, they bring agility, flexibility and in some case cost savings as well, for using that model." –Steven Spiers, CTO, Charles River Labs
	National Democratic Institute Gains Application Reusability with a VMware Hybrid Cloud: “VMware vCloud Director helps us better serve our users, including those in developing countries. We can configure virtual servers, point to URLs, and fire up applications within a matter of minutes. It’s less costly for us and less time-consuming, and because it’s a virtualized deployment, the hosting costs are also low.” — Chris Spence, Chief Technology Officer, National Democratic Institute
	Oxford University Delivers DBaaS with a VMware Hybrid Cloud: “Access to information is critical to maintain our position as the world’s top university and we needed a flexible, scalable infrastructure. After doing our own research, we decided a Hybrid Cloud as best suited to our requirements. The vCloud datacentre service combined with Colt’s pedigree in information delivery, was the natural choice for us.” –Dr. Stuart Lee, Director of IT, University of Oxford

For more stories on how customers are going to the cloud with VMware (today), visit Another VMware Cloud and the Public Cloud Diaries.

vSphere and vCloud Director are battle-tested solutions supporting some of the world’s most important and challenging workloads. As proven cloud solutions, the list of companies using VMware for the cloud continues to grow, making today a reality and tomorrow come a lot sooner.