Cloud computing is the new wave after virtualization and VMware vSphere lacks a true multi-tenant support and partial automation and agility.

For this reason, VMware has several products for cloud management, addressed at private or public cloud scenarios. The most important VMware cloud-capable solutions are vCloud Director (vCD) and vRealize Automation (vRA). VMware vCD was the first product (if we exclude Lab Manager, which was not truly multi-tenant) to bring full cloud capabilities to vSphere.

Actually, this product is still present, but it is reserved only for service providers willing to build and sell public cloud services as part of the VMware vCloud Air Network (vCAN) program based on top of the vSphere platform; these offerings are inherently hybrid-aware and ideal for enterprise-class organizations that want to extend their VMware-based private cloud into the public one.

In 2012, VMware acquired DynamicOps, a provider of cloud automation solutions that enable provisioning and management of IT services across heterogeneous environments. VMware vRA is a product of this acquisition and enables IT automation through the creation and management of personalized infrastructure, application, and custom IT services (XaaS). This IT automation lets you deploy IT services rapidly across a multi-vendor, multi-cloud infrastructure. In this case, the underlying infrastructure could be vSphere-based (probably the most common choice) but vRA can be extended to orchestrate and automate other non-VMware hypervisors and clouds, making possible a true multi-vendor and multi-cloud approach.

Of course, there are other types of cloud management platform (such as OpenStack), but in this case, VMware vSphere could be just a possible choice, not necessarily the main one.