More often these days  I hear about the added complexity that hosting providers face when considering adopting an infrastructure of the “cloud variety.”

They all pretty much require a level of sophistication. Thus, it’s no surprise that service providers have done fairly well for themselves in building out cloud infrastructures for customers. There’s a lot of money in that business.

VMware is not immune. So it’s of notice that the company is now promising a new level of automation with  its new vCloud Integration Manager.

The offering automate the delivery and operations of VMware vCloud Director based clouds. It’s billed as a way to create and deploy cloud services, automate set up, manage partners and make your bed while you are at the office. No. Just kidding. But it does have bells and whistles such as a REST-based API to integrate with a service provider’s back office systems (CRM, billing, etc.), and a Web-based administration portal.

This seems pretty basic but is it enough? Most of the hosting providers lack any developer expertise.

Nonetheless, VMware seems to be signing up its share of partners. Here’s its tally:

• There times the number of partners (87) in vCloud Powered vs. Q4 2011 (31)
• 7 major players in vCloud Datacenter From no clouds 3 years ago to 94 in 19 countries today
• >200% VMware revenue growth in 2011 from service providers

Automation and simplification – that’s the message from VMware. But how does  it compare to other providers? AWS requires no deep integrations. It turns on for developers and its ecosystem is far deeper than any service provider in the market. Rackspace? Microsoft? Red Hat? All require a deep knowledge of the technologies. VMware is not much different. There is till considerable customization required. But what may be a difference is its integration with the back end. Collect money faster? That always helps gain acceptance.