VMware and AWS Announce Initial Availability of VMware Cloud on AWS

At VMworld 2017, VMware and Amazon Web Services have announced the initial availability of VMware Cloud on AWS. Born out of the strategic alliance announced in October 2016, VMware Cloud on AWS brings VMware’s software-defined data center (SDDC) to the AWS Cloud, allowing customers to run applications across operationally consistent VMware vSphere®-based private, public, and hybrid cloud environments, with optimized access to AWS services. VMware Cloud on AWS is delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically-scalable cloud service that removes barriers to cloud migration and cloud portability, increases IT efficiency, and opens up new opportunities for customers to leverage a hybrid cloud environment. To get started with VMware Cloud on AWS, visit http://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws.

Customers across industries are accelerating adoption of AWS Cloud and VMware infrastructure, and many of them want the ability to seamlessly integrate their on-premises data center environments with AWS using their existing tools and skillsets within a common operating environment based on familiar VMware software. VMware Cloud on AWS delivers on this promise, with a seamlessly integrated hybrid cloud that extends on-premises vSphere environments to a VMware SDDC running on AWS elastic, bare-metal infrastructure.

“VMware and AWS are empowering enterprise IT and operations teams to add value to their businesses through the combination of VMware enterprise capabilities and the breadth and depth of capabilities and scale of the AWS Cloud, providing them a platform for any application,” said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware. “VMware Cloud on AWS gives customers a seamlessly integrated hybrid cloud that delivers the same architecture, capabilities, and operational experience across both their vSphere-based on-premises environment and AWS.”

“With the availability of VMware Cloud on AWS, for the first time customers can operate a consistent and seamless hybrid IT environment that combines the VMware software they love with the unmatched functionality, security, and operational expertise of the AWS Cloud,” said Andy Jassy, chief executive officer, AWS. “The majority of the world’s enterprises have virtualized their data centers with VMware, and now these customers can easily move applications between their on-premises environments and AWS without having to purchase any new hardware, rewrite their applications, or modify their operations.”
VMware Cloud on AWS is powered by VMware Cloud Foundation™, the unified SDDC platform that integrates vSphere, VMware VSAN™, and VMware NSX® virtualization technologies with VMware vCenter® management. This means customers can use familiar VMware tools to manage their applications, without having to purchase any new or custom hardware, rewrite applications, or modify their operating model. With VMware Cloud on AWS, customers can leverage AWS’s breadth of services, including compute, databases, analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), security, mobile, deployment, application services, and more.

VMware Cloud on AWS delivers:
• Enterprise capabilities of VMware SDDC with the agility, unmatched functionality, and operational expertise of AWS’s leading public cloud
• Identical skills, tools, and processes for managing private and public cloud environments so customers have consistent operations, improved productivity, and reduced costs
• Seamless, fast, and bi-directional workload portability between private and public clouds
• Flexibility to choose where to run applications based on business needs, while having access to a broad set of AWS services and infrastructure elasticity for VMware SDDC environments
• Rapid time to value with the ability to scale host capacity up or down in a few minutes, and spin up an entire VMware SDDC in under a couple hours
• Ability to run, manage, and secure applications in a hybrid IT environment without having to purchase custom hardware, rewrite applications, or modify operating models

VMware Cloud on AWS is ideal for customers looking to migrate applications to the public cloud, develop entirely new applications, extend the capacity of their data centers for existing applications, or quickly provision development and test environments. It will also support containerized workloads and DevOps services such as Pivotal Cloud Foundry, and others. VMware and AWS plan to continue to innovate together to add new capabilities and additional AWS regions to support customers that want to use VMware Cloud on AWS for disaster recovery, data center consolidation, and geographic expansion.

The service is initially available in the AWS US West (Oregon) region and will expand to AWS regions worldwide in 2018. Today customers can consume this service hourly and pay only for each hour that a host is active in their account. Pricing and requirements can be found at http://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws/pricing. VMware will make one-year and three-year subscription options available in the future. VMware’s Hybrid Loyalty Program will provide discounts to customers with on-premises VMware vSphere, NSX, and/or vSAN licenses. The pricing model, combined with the VMware Hybrid Loyalty Program discounts, will offer very attractive TCO benefits on a per-VM basis to both VMware and AWS customers.

Broad Technology Partner Ecosystem Supports Frictionless Hybrid Cloud Experience
The VMware Cloud on AWS technology partner ecosystem provides customers simplicity, consistency, and choice in technology solutions when building a hybrid cloud. Today, more than 30 solutions are available for DevOps, application migration, data protection, cloud analytics, security, and more. The same third-party solutions VMware customers use on-premises; the tools, configurations, and processes that customers built for these solutions; and the operational skills and competencies developed over time, now seamlessly transfer to VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware technology complement and enhance native VMware Cloud on AWS services capabilities. Read more about the VMware partner ecosystem in this blog.

VMware Solutions Simplify and Automate VMware Cloud on AWS Hybrid Cloud Environments
Customers can use VMware’s management products with VMware Cloud on AWS, so they have a unified and operationally consistent experience across private, public, and hybrid clouds. Today, VMware vRealize® Automation™ supports VMware Cloud on AWS by automating workload provisioning and deployment; vRealize Operations™ delivers proactive performance management, capacity optimization, and unified visibility; and vRealize ® Business™ for Cloud tracks and manages costs, accelerates planning, and drives business alignment. Other VMware solutions, including VMware Site Recovery Manager™, VMware vSphere Integrated Containers, and VMware Cloud Services will follow in the future. Read more about the VMware Cloud on AWS integration with vRealize Suite in this blog.