The ability to accelerate innovation is one of the key factors driving the world’s most successful organisations.
But like Popeye robbed of his spinach or Thor his hammer, even the most robust business plan will be rendered useless without a full suite of cutting edge technological infrastructure supporting it.
Until now this has been a big issue for Australian and New Zealand businesses eager to realise their ambitions to increase deployments to cloud services without amplifying cost, purchasing additional hardware or reengineering work already completed.
The arrival of a new hybrid cloud service, delivered by two global powerhouses of private and public cloud, now promises to answer demand from customers who seek to leverage all the benefits of the private cloud and on-premises infrastructure experience while delaying the requirement to convert existing applications.
Providing a unified infrastructure framework that bridges the gap between private and public clouds, hybrid clouds are the solution that the 60 percent of large enterprises running workloads in the public cloud (1) have been waiting for.
The details
Essentially an on-demand VMware software defined datacentre (SDDC) delivered as a cloud service, VMware Cloud on AWS allows customers to scale faster while offering direct access to the power of native Amazon Web Services.
Powered by a unified SDDC platform, dubbed VMware Cloud Foundation, the service integrates vCentre Server (a centralised platform for managing vSphere environments), ESXi (a virtualisation server), NSX (software defined networking) and vSAN (software defined storage) technologies.
Optimised to run on next-generation, elastic, bare-metal AWS infrastructure, it offers the functionality, elasticity and security expected from providers of this calibre.
The platform offers users access to the broad range of 165-plus AWS services incorporating everything from virtual machine images, servers, storage, software, and databases to complete multi-tier application architectures.
Perhaps VMware Cloud on AWS’s most compelling feature, however, is that enterprises can manage this service from an existing VMware vCentre Server interface with the ability to easily scale AWS resources.
Feedback from existing users, which at a local level include the NSW Government’s Department of Customer Service, suggests one of the key benefits of using this technology is that it allows users to minimise the complexity and associated risks of managing diverse environments.
The users
Organisations looking to migrate applications to the public cloud, develop new applications, extend the capacity of existing data centres, or quickly provision development and test environments, are reaping the greatest rewards with VMware Cloud on AWS.
Yet it seems it’s not just VMware and Amazon who have strategic interest in the long-term viability and growth of this platform.
Despite the fact the technology is relatively new, VMware Cloud on AWS’s popularity looks set to skyrocket with all signs leading to the platform’s continued dominance of this category.
In a 2018 report forecasting the future of cloud managed services, advisory group Gartner claimed that hybrid IT scenarios combining cloud services with on-premises information technology systems will dominate the IT landscape for the near future as organisations selectively utilise public cloud services to benefit from the cloud value proposition.
The same report determined that by 2022, 55 percent to 60 percent of organisations will use an external service provider’s cloud managed service offering – up from 30 percent in 2018.
The data is consistent with research undertaken by the same group that suggests that customers looking for on-demand capacity for scalability find VMware Cloud on AWS the most compelling option.
An additional Gartner report predicted that by early 2020, one million virtual machines globally will be running on VMware Cloud on AWS. It also found that by year-end 2021, more than 150,000 hosts will be supported by VMware Cloud on AWS.
The costs
This level of innovation always comes at a price. Yet while it’s $250,000 entry level pricing may prove prohibitive for smaller organisations, the VMware Cloud on AWS business model has been set up to offer larger users of the service the chance to shift their IT provisioning from a capital expenditure to an operational one.
Owing to the sophistication and unique engineering of VMware’s management and policy tools, this technology offers a unified and operationally consistent experience. This means there is no custom hardware to deploy in the on-premises environment, and no requirement to rewrite or modify applications, allowing users to leverage all existing investments to help save money.
In addition, the VMware Cloud on AWS model comes in a standard pack that includes three physical nodes. Licence fees are then based on how many additional nodes are required. Dedicated clusters combining VMware software and AWS infrastructure can then be purchased either on demand or as part of a monthly subscription service.
The assistance
VMware Cloud on AWS is a VMware service that is delivered, operated, sold and supported by VMware, with the assistance of a number of international partners, including AC3, that also provide a managed service.
Depending on the user’s individual agreement, there is a standard support number to call for all VMware Cloud of AWS users for queries related to general infrastructure life cycle management, such as technical support, login queries or software upgrade issues. If a user has purchased a managed service through AC3, then it will attempt to iron out any issues a user may encounter.
In addition, all customers are provided with supplementary resources to ensure success, including access to online chat support and forums.