On Tuesday VMware unveiled its vCloud Hybrid Service, an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution meant to hinder Amazon’s expansion into the traditional enterprise market. Wikibon senior analyst Stu Miniman discussed the news in a recent interview with SiliconAngle’s Kristin Feledy.

VMware first announced the offering at a partner conference in February, but we didn’t know too much about it until now. New details emerged this week, revealing that customers will be able to integrate the service into their VMware-virtualized private clouds to create a consistent, albeit complicated, hybrid environment.

Miniman says that vCloud Hybrid Service is expected to launch in the third quarter of this year. The platform is rolling out to only four locations initially, but VMware has plans to make it available in other parts of the U.S., as well as Europe and Asia, through 2014.

The virtualization vendor will sell the service directly rather than through the channel, a decision that will undoubtedly lead to friction with its service provider partners. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to Miniman. He explains that vCloud Hybrid is comparable to Microsoft’s Surface tablet: the device undermined the software giant’s key hardware partners, but it also gave them a reason to develop their own Windows 8 tablets.

VMware’s service is fully integrated with its widely-used cloud management service, but Amazon Web Services offers API compatibility with vSphere. At the same time, there are a couple of major differences between the two platforms: VMware’s offering is subscription based while AWS bills by the hour, and the latter is famous for its simplicity. VMware gave no indication that its service makes it easier to run workloads.

For full highlights from the interview, including Miniman’s take on Dell’s new Cloud Partner program, check out the video below.