VMware finds a way to wring more cash out of virtualization customers.

VMware today unveiled its first public infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud product, putting the virtualization software vendor into direct competition with Amazon Web Services. When combined with its in-house software, VMware’s cloud also provides an alternative to the virtualization/cloud synergy Microsoft is trying to achieve with Hyper-V, Windows Server, and Windows Azure.

VMware will establish four data centers from which it will offer its competition to Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure-as-a-service, the company announced Tuesday. But there are big differences between what VMware is doing and what an AWS, Google or Rackspace does.

Yes, this sounds great and all but how much is it going to cost you?

Pricing, while announced, also remains somewhat cloaked. As vCloud Hybrid Service becomes available in June, early access users will pay by the hour but will gradually graduate into monthly or annual rates, depending on the nature of the service used. The pricing listed for multi-tenant service, 4.5 cents an hour for one virtual CPU and one GB of memory, sort of approximates the medium-sized servers of Google and Amazon, if multiplied by three. So for a rough comparison, the VMware pricing comes out at $0.135 for VMware; $0.132 for Google and $0.12 for Amazon. But, of course, there’s no shutting down a virtual machine and saving money during the nighttime hours if you’re going to be charged by the month or the year. The base unit of pricing is also too small a virtual machine to be of much use in most enterprises. Details remain to be explained in how the pricing will actually work out. Fathers said listing a price for a basic VM unit was an effort to impose simplicity on a complicated subject. It is also likely to impose some confusion as well.

We still think this is going to be a great option for VMWare virtualized disaster recovery and busines continuity. Stay tuned for more!