SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 13, 2016-- VMware (NYSE:VMW) and Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced a strategic alliance to build and deliver a seamlessly integrated hybrid offering that will give customers the full software-defined data center (SDDC) experience from the leader in the private cloud, running on the world’s most popular, trusted, and robust public cloud. VMware Cloud™ on AWS will enable customers to run applications across VMware vSphere®-based private, public, and hybrid cloud environments. 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. For more information on VMware Cloud on AWS, visit VMware Cloud on AWS.
MyPOV -Describes well what the partnership is about – keep VM formats, images, tools, practices and seamlessly gain an outlet to the public cloud, in this case AWS. Similar to the IBM partnership announced earlier this year (see our analysis here) both VMware and AWS will work together to provide this seamless services. Effectively VMware on AWS creates what VMware promised a long time with vCloudAir - only the hardware comes from AWS this time.
Most enterprises rely on VMware to run applications in their vSphere-based private clouds, and often these same customers are also running applications on AWS. Increasingly, these customers have asked both companies to make it easier to run their existing on-premises environments alongside AWS using the VMware software and tools they’ve come to rely on.
MyPOV – Always good to listen to customers and be customer driven. It’s nice for customers to have the opportunity to use their VMware loads and now be able to combine them with AWS offerings. But these offerings are mostly AWS cloud bound, so its likely for joint customers to pick up dependencies on AWS, and with that remain on the public cloud side.
VMware Cloud on AWS is a jointly architected solution that will integrate the world’s leading private cloud and the world’s leading public cloud. VMware Cloud on AWS is 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, together with the functionality, elasticity, and security customers have come to expect from the AWS Cloud. This 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. 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.
MyPOV – So effectively VMware is re-platforming its SDDC architecture on top of AWS machines, referred to as next generation, elastic, bare metal AWS infrastructure. Not any converged hardware that VMware used to sell and is still selling. One wonders why AWS would not run the VMware converged servers, designed for nothing else than running VMware loads? The answer to that will be interesting and risks to leave some challenging thoughts with VMware converged infrastructure customers. Buying through the VMware commercial agreement should make things easier.
“VMware Cloud on AWS offers our customers the best of both worlds,” said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware. “This new service will make it easier for customers to preserve their investment in existing applications and processes while taking advantage of the global footprint, advanced capabilities, and scale of the AWS public cloud.”
MyPOV – Good quote from Gelsinger, but by conceding to AWS for infrastructure, he implicitly states (at least here) that the VMware (and EMC and maybe future Dell offerings) for infrastructure will not play (for now) on the public cloud side.
“Our customers continue to ask us to make it easier for them to run their existing data center investments alongside AWS,” said Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS. “Most enterprises are already virtualized using VMware, and now with VMware Cloud on AWS, for the first time, it will be easy for customers to operate a consistent and seamless hybrid IT environment using their existing VMware tools on AWS, and without having to purchase custom hardware, rewrite their applications, or modify their operating model.”
MyPOV -Good quote from Jassy, describing what happens from the AWS side. Could not be much better, VMware is bringing load to AWS, while keeping it familiar for them to operate it. And the chance of tying that load together with AWS products, with the possible consequence of becoming ‘sticky’ to AWS infrastructure. There is almost nothing not to like her, if you are AWS.
Availability
Available in mid-2017, VMware Cloud on AWS will be delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically scalable service. Pricing will be made available closer to the general availability date.
MyPOV – Good to know when this will be available, and it’s a little far out for cloud speed with 9-10 months. But important to know early – as this may stop customers from extending their on premises data center investments and moving to a hybrid model, using AWS infrastructure.
Overall MyPOV
Always good to see when vendors listen to customers, and customers win. In this case it is the VMware centric enterprise, that does not want to invest into on premises resources, or as AWS evangelist Jeff Barr points out in his blog here, wants to combine existing loads with next generation capabilities that AWS offers. The potential dependency on AWS for these solutions is something all enterprises need to make ‘wide eyes open’ decisions on.AWS wins a lot here. First of all, a former adversary – VMware – is now a key partner. Loads that were stuck and holding out in VMware centric landscapes, possible waiting for vCloudAir to materialize – and out of reach – are now available for AWS. And all of that with no re-imaging, re-testing, re-anything – it cannot get much better for any public cloud IaaS. And longer term the option to upsell more AWS services, so ponying up the CAPEX for these machines, investing resources to build the common solution is a small price to pay. AWS is in this business anyway, the more uniform load it can address, the better.
VMware certainly wins in the short term, too – it keeps customers on VMware, monetizes the moving and administration of the hybrid load and extends all that on VMware paper, effectively OEMing AWS. Effectively AWS is providing the infrastructure to an offering that VMware wanted to offer with vCloudAIr but never managed to have take off. VMware fans may say it was the lack of other tools and products to complement moving the VMware load there, but to me this is the end of the 3+ year riddle why VMware cloud not move loads to public cloud: The inability or non readiness to invest the large amounts of CAPEX to invest into the public cloud infrastructure to run VMware. Effectively it will have taken 4 years – holding both vendors to the above dates – and a complete change in strategy. It begs the question – had VMware done this deal with AWS 3 or even 4 years ago – would VMware (and its customers) bebetter of today? The answer is really related how fast enterprises will move to the public cloud, if hybrid is only a transition, and how long that transition will last. No matter how you spin this, VMware is loosing load on premises for a variety of reasons already (that’s a whole blog post by itself), at the same time it will not be able to command the same pricing levels when running e.g. on AWS than when running VMware on premises. It’s different times and with that I see a longer term loosing hand for VMware. But short term we know this works, as the success of the IBM and VMware partnership has shown. The difference of AWS and VMware is – it will be sold and operated by VMware. The pipelines of VMware sales people may be better filled well for this to work, future quarters will tell. We know that man VMware customers have been holding out hoping for a solution from VMware with vCloudAir – them forgetting and forgiving quickly will be key for the success of the partnership.
The other takeaway is that AWS is quickly becoming the IT department of very large software vendors. We saw that with SAP BW/4HANA (see our take here) and now we see it with VMware on AWS. It is puzzling as the margins of these vendors are greater than the margins of AWS, but at the same time lack of success, fortune, know-how, etc. on their own public cloud offerings has driven giants like SAP and VMware in the arms of AWS. The cloud of the ‘book retailer’ as some observers will remember. Good for AWS, who is willing to keep investing, when other enterprise software giants have stumbled, slowed down, shied away etc. you name it.
Finally VMware is now part of Dell Technology. One can only assume that VMware has telegraphed in all this with HQ in Texas. Maybe the hope is that customers will stay on VMware and move loads back to a super attractive (but still to be announced) Dell Technology SDDC offering. We can only speculate. But effectively VMware has given an effective outlet to its customer from any – not only Dell’s and its own converged offerings – to the public cloud. With VMware founder Diane Greene at Google, anyone would be surprised if a similar partnership with Google Cloud Platform is not in the making. Azure next. Exciting times for sure.
What’s your take on VMware on AWS?