First unveiled at VMworld 2013 in September, vCloud Hybrid Service is an IaaS solution that competes with AWS over the 60 percent of organizations that utilize VMware software in their IT environments. The virtualization giant is now launching a new data center in Slough, 20 miles west of London, to make the platform available for customers in the UK.

Select clients will be able to participate in a private beta for vCloud Hybrid from the fourth quarter until the service becomes generally available in early 2014. VMware hybrid cloud services head Bill Fathers, who stopped by the theCUBE at VMworld to discuss his company’s plans to expand beyond the data center, said in a statement that:

“The UK represents one of the largest IT markets in Europe, and VMware is committed to providing customers with a local, in-country public cloud which will enable them to extend their current data centers and deploy new cloud-native applications. This is the first significant milestone in our commitment to deliver cloud services in Europe. VMware vCloud Hybrid Service is growing quickly in the U.S., and this expansion addresses UK and European data locality, privacy, security and sovereignty challenges.”

VMware announced that it’s bringing its cloud service to the UK in conjunction with the debut of the vCloud Hybrid Service Online Marketplace, an enterprise app store that features more than 3,800 pre-certified solutions and customer resources. Further extending the platform, the company is adding integration with vCloud Automation Center 5.2 and 6.0. A complementary vSphere Web Client plugin that allows admins to manage their ESXi hosts and public cloud environments from a single interface will be rolled out in December.