VMware and AWS Team Up in Effort to Lock Down Hybrid Cloud

VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a strategic partnership to build and deliver a seamlessly integrated hybrid cloud offering that will give customers the full software-defined data center (SDDC) experience.  This alliance brings together two leaders in Enterprise IT, VMware as the leader in the private cloud market with vSphere on-premises, combined with Amazon AWS, the leader in the public cloud.  Together, the pair will allow customers to deliver a vSphere-based cloud service running on AWS, a service that will make it easier for customers to run any application, using a set of familiar software and tools, in a consistent hybrid cloud environment.

The combination might come as a surprise to some.  It wasn’t that long ago when VMware executives were calling Amazon a glorified bookstore of sorts.  Carl Eschenbach told attendees at its VMware Partner conference, "I look at this audience, and I look at VMware and the brand reputation we have in the enterprise, and I find it really hard to believe that we cannot collectively beat a company that sells books.”

After a number of different public cloud iterations on its own and even more with various partnerships, VMware has struggled with the cloud market.  While it can boast an impressive near 100 percent penetration inside the data center, public and therefore hybrid cloud has alluded the company.  VMware is currently the "go-to company" for server virtualization, but we’re quickly moving away from a data center-centric world.  And while most enterprises today rely on VMware to run applications in their vSphere-based private clouds, those same customers may also run applications in the cloud on AWS.

And all of that adds up to one thing.  Evidently, it is pretty difficult to beat the online bookstore at the public cloud game. 

If you can’t beat them, join them.  Enter the new alliance and the VMware Cloud on AWS, a jointly architected solution.  VMware Cloud on AWS will be powered by VMware Cloud Foundation, a unified SDDC platform that integrates VMware vSphere, VMware Virtual SAN and NSX virtualization technologies, and will provide access to the full range of AWS services.

Delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service, VMware Cloud on AWS will allow VMware customers to use their existing VMware software and tools to leverage AWS’s global footprint and breadth of services, including storage, databases, analytics and more.
 
According to the VMware announcement, the new service represents a significant investment in engineering, operations, support, and sales resources from both companies.  It will run on next-generation, elastic, bare metal AWS infrastructure.  And customers will have the ability to purchase services through their existing VMware commercial agreement and use their existing VMware software investments to secure additional loyalty discounts for their VMware Cloud on AWS hybrid environment.

This is a win-win opportunity for both partners.

Frank Denneman, a VMware senior staff architect, said there are a number of strengths to VMware Cloud on AWS:

It allows administrators, operation teams and architects to use their existing skill set and tools to consume AWS infrastructure. You can move workloads to the cloud without having to replatform them in any way, no conversion of virtual machines, no repackaging and very important no extensive testing, you just migrate the VM. Another strength it the ability to pair current workloads with the advanced feature set of AWS. As a result, IT teams will be able to extend their skill set discovering the vast catalog of services AWS has to offer. This creates an environment that works seamlessly with both on-premises private clouds and advanced AWS Public Cloud Services.  

The partnership is a major win for Amazon.  It gains strong momentum into the hybrid playground where it has had limited opportunities up until now causing it to easily grow its marketshare. 

Both companies are clearly gunning for Microsoft, which is well positioned in the hybrid cloud.  And it will potentially throw a major roadblock towards IBM and its SoftLayer unit.

The close partnership between VMware and AWS also comes on the heel of the Dell acquisition of EMC.  Dell, of course, has had a strong relationship with AWS over the years, so this new partnership with VMware makes logical sense. 

Hybrid cloud seems to be the future direction.  And a partnership between the largest on-premises private cloud and the largest off-premises public cloud may just be what’s needed to get us there sooner rather than later.  Now we just need to get beyond the potential technical and cultural hurdles.

Availability

Invite-only betas are expected to start at the beginning of 2017 with availability expected to be sometime in the mid-2017 time-frame.

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About the Author

David Marshall is an industry recognized virtualization and cloud computing expert, a seven time recipient of the VMware vExpert distinction, and has been heavily involved in the industry for the past 16 years.  To help solve industry challenges, he co-founded and helped start several successful virtualization software companies such as ProTier, Surgient, Hyper9 and Vertiscale. He also spent a few years transforming desktop virtualization while at Virtual Bridges.

David is also a co-author of two very popular server virtualization books: "Advanced Server Virtualization: VMware and Microsoft Platforms in the Virtual Data Center" and "VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center" and the Technical Editor on Wiley’s "Virtualization for Dummies" and "VMware VI3 for Dummies" books.  David also authored countless articles for a number of well known technical magazines, including: InfoWorld, Virtual-Strategy and TechTarget.  In 2004, he founded the oldest independent virtualization and cloud computing news site, VMblog.com, which he still operates today.

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