From the 'what is the cloud anyways' files:

LAS VEGAS. VMware's CTO Stephen Herrod took the stage at Interop this morning to talk about virtualization and the cloud.

The cloud is a term that is often abused lately and isn't exactly standard (in my view) Herrod gave his own opinion on what the 'cloud' could also be called.

"Some call it a software mainframe others call it cloud, it depends on when you were born," Herrod said.

I personally haven't heard the term software mainframe before in reference to the cloud, but the idea is sound. Essentially the 'cloud' is a massive distributed compute fabric and it can behave like a mainframe (from scale/power perspective).

Herrod spent most of his time explaining how VMware has evolved from being just about server virtualization, to being about enabling the complete software mainframe. Things like vSphere which was released a few weeks ago are key to moving beyond simple server virtualization.

Herrod also noted that virtualization doesn't mean slower performance either. He said that currently virtualization can be as fast if not faster than native hardware.

As cloud (or the software mainframe) is a key topic here at Interop this week, I expect that many will echo Herrod's sentiment that the cloud is fast and it's about more than just server virtualization at this point.