As Eric Siebert has pointed out, the VMware vSphere release cycles are shortening.

While vSphere 5.1 could be seen as a bit rushed, especially in regards to SSO, when it was released, the shorter release cycles seem to work out pretty well.

This does make me think though; vSphere 5.5 is pretty much ready to be released to the general public, and the new VSAN component will be in a public beta at the same time.

Does this indicate that VMware might actually be moving to a more modular approach, with different release cycles for different components?

I can see how this works for “add-on” products like Horizon View, VDP and so on, but for “core” components like a new the local storage layer this is a new one.

Is this a new modular approach or is due to the fact that the release cycle this time around was too short to get VSAN included?

Or, perhaps is it as simple as Jason A Linden just suggested on Twitter; VSAN will be included in vSphere 5.5 Update 1?