VMware on Tuesday announced the launch of an open source platform-as-a-service (PaaS), called Cloud Foundry.

Cloud Foundry represents a new cohort of application platform, designed purposely for cloud computing environments. It is delivered as a service from public cloud service providers and enterprise datacenters.

The new service rationalizes the development, delivery and operations of modern applications to allow developers to deploy, run and scale their applications in cloud environments more easily and efficiently.

Speaking on the new cloud Foundry, Senior Director of Cloud & Application Services Jerry Chen said, "Cloud Foundry is about expanding a PaaS engine across multiple clouds, frameworks and application services.”

Chen further said that Cloud Foundry would consume and make vFabric easier to deploy to applications.

The open source version of Cloud Foundry is now available as a beta. The company is yet to announce as to when the commercial product will become available.