As its annual customer conference opens in San Francisco this week, VMware Inc. is providing a taste of things to come with the release of two significant cosmetic updates for its public cloud that send a message of seriousness to the ecosystem and partners in particular.

First, the virtualization giant has rebranded the platform from the rather humdrum vCloud Hybrid Service to vCloud Air. The move is symbolic, but it serves as further evidence that the company sees hybrid clouds as an important component of its portfolio and is brushing up its image rather than paying lip service to the growing enterprise adoption of public cloud services.

That represents an encouraging signal for customers and even more so for partners, who, as Wikibon analyst Stu Miniman recently noted on SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE, have been receiving mixed signals on how they fit into VMware’s infrastructure-as-a-service vision. The vendor hopes to clear away some of that confusion with vCloud Air Network, a reboot of its existing service provider program aimed at quickly extending the platform to regions that it has yet to reach on its own.

VMware already maintains a number of data centers throughout North America, Europe and Asia, but it can’t expand quickly enough to catch up with Amazon Web Services and still make it worthwhile. Nor does it intend to. With the Air Network, the firm is tapping into its existing base of more than 3,800 cloud partners across 100 countries to rapidly scale its infrastructure footprint without the massive costs that would be involved in growing independently at the same pace as its competitors.

The program is built around a badge system that aims to make it easy for customers to understand exactly how a given partner matches up against its peers in cloud service delivery. Providers designated “Hybrid Cloud Powered,” for example, have proven that their clouds are fully interoperable with customer environments running on VMware’s virtualization software, while those designated “Horizon DaaS Powered” are certified to deliver the company’s virtual desktop service.

There’s also an “”IaaS Powered” badge in store for partners that have standardized their infrastructure on VMware’s management platform, but that’s more an attempt to drive license sales than provide transparency. Still, the Air Network marks another step in VMware’s campaign to win market share from market leader Amazon.com Inc. in the ever-crucial public cloud.

“VMware is all in on the cloud game especially hybrid confirmed by Pat Gelsinger last year on theCUBE. This is all about stopping AWS. Amazon is the only company that can take down the Federation’s dominance,” says SiliconANGLE founder John Furrier.To catch more breaking analysis and insider news from VMworld, visit the official CrowdChat thread (embedded below).

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