VMware’s hybrid cloud service is unlikely to ruffle any feathers in the service provider industry yet because it targets a different use case to Amazon and other popular established cloud services, according to Rackspace VP of technology Nigel Beighton.

In fact, Beighton said he believes there could be a way the companies could work together in future.

“This is why I am here,” Beighton said, speaking from VMware’s key European event VMworld Europe which kicked off yesterday.

One of VMware’s key European announcements at the event is around its vCloud Hybrid Service, which was previously available only in the US.

VMware said it will plans to work with a third-party data center provider to bring the service in the UK, and that it plans to roll this out with facilities and services created for other European countries after its European launch in Q1 next year.

Ex Savvis president and VMware SVP and general manager for Hybrid Cloud Services Bill Fathers told critics yesterday that VMware plans to maintain an even playing ground in the cloud market which many of its customers work in by offering all of the same technologies it uses inside its own cloud data centers to key partners and customers.

“On one level it may be seen as competitive offering but it’s a vast market,” Fathers said.

And it appears the industry – or at least Rackspace – agrees.

Beighton said VMware is not currently viewed as a competitor to its business but did admit it could be in future.

“We will see how it goes,” Beighton said.

“Our markets are undergoing a massive revolution. The whole move to this kind of consumable API-driven world is a revolution. There is lots going on here and you just don’t know how things play out.”

Beighton commended VMware for bringing out its cloud service, saying it makes sense for the company’s smaller channel partners

“I think it is a good move. This announcement is about the existing people selling VMware software. Now they can say they can sell this as a service. For that market I think this is a good thing,” Beighton said.

“The likes of Colt Rackspace or Terremark - the large colo or managed hosting companies, who can effectively do this themselves, quite easily – have to ask if they want to use this new service or not. I think that that will be an interesting  discussion. Would I be against it? Not in the slightest. I would be interested to know on what basis.

“I still believe though that I can offer what I think is a far more technically capable connection form my data center into cloud.”

Beighton said he sees the VMware hybrid cloud service will appeal to users that are interested mostly in increasing capacity on the fly.

“You have people that say their existing app set sits very happily in this VMware, vSphere world, and they just want to be able to use some capacity somewhere else, “Beighton said. “That’s where this works, I get that.”

“Then you have another bunch of people doing cloud building applications using specialised load balancers, Open Stack cueing mechanisms, block storage, object storage, shifting some data over  to an Objectrocket Mongo store. So you have two very diff types of people here. These people will still come to companies like Rackspace, Digitalocean and Amazon..

“It (the VMware cloud) is a good fit for people who are frustrated and want the cheaper economics.”