One of Amazon's fiercest rivals, VMware, is about to give in and join Amazon's cloud

For many years, VMware has been waging a war against Amazon's encroaching cloud computing business. Next week it is finally expected to wave the white flag.

That's when VMware is expected to announce it is partnering with Amazon to make VMware's software run more easily on Amazon's cloud, reports Fortune's Barb Darrow.

This will be a big about face for VMware, who sells its own cloud services and its own cloud software that competes with Amazon.

In addition to selling its own cloud, known as "vCloud Air," VMware has created a network thousands of data center and hosting providers to also offer vCloud Air. The idea being that if you choose vCloud, you aren't trapped with one service provider but have many to choose from. And you can use them in conjunction with running apps and data (aka a "workload") in your own corporate data centers, too.

This "anti-Amazon" cloud strategy attempted to keep VMware's customers buying VMware's flagship data center software.

Back in 2013, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger famously told its army of resellers and consultants and service providers that when clouds like Amazon's gain customers, "we all lose."

VMware vice president Carl Eschenbach went even further, reported CRN's Steven Burke at the time, saying, "I find it really hard to believe that we cannot collectively beat a company that sells books."

Eschenbach went on to become COO at VMware but just left the company in April to become a venture capitalist at Sequoia.

Needless to say, VMware didn't beat Amazon, nor did it own the cloud industry. Amazon's cloud has eaten much of the computer industry.

VMware, meanwhile, became a subsidiary of Dell in September when Dell completed its acquisition of VMware parent company EMC. However, some of VMware's shares are publicly owned, and it has its own tracking stock, while Dell is private.

VMware declined comment.

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.