VMware cloud on AWS

27.04.2021

Changing the cloud migration and application modernisation game

The shift to digital delivery of products and services began long before the events of 2020. This shift has increased the reliance on digital infrastructure to support traditional business applications. It’s predicted that by the end of 2021, most organisations will begin to fast-track their move to cloud-centric digital infrastructure much faster than planned before the pandemic. IDC research shows that spending on public cloud infrastructure services will exceed spending on traditional on-premises infrastructure systems by enterprise organisations within the next five years and that a majority are already using public cloud in one form or another for their IT needs.

Hybrid cloud: The default environment

The cloud’s benefits of flexibility and automation, allowing organisations to scale and adapt as necessary with minimal manual intervention, are invaluable in today’s environment. Hybrid cloud is becoming the default IT environment, with workloads deployed across public cloud and on-premises infrastructure to offer better agility and flexibility. The benefits of hybrid cloud include:

Better support for a remote workforce
Reduced costs with a more cost-effective way to scale operations
Improved scalability and control
Increased agility and innovation
Improved business continuity and reduced potential downtime
Improved security and risk management

Obstacles to hybrid cloud

Taking full advantage of these benefits is challenging. In IDC’s 2020 ‘IaaSView’ Survey, results suggest obstacles to a seamless hybrid cloud IT environment centre around the three areas: lack of environmental consistency, limited operational consistency, and dissimilar tools and frameworks.

Lack of environmental consistency

Migration to a cloud environment can range from basic re-hosting to rearchitecting of applications. The effort required is determined by the level of consistency between the on-premises and cloud environments, along with the level of skills available within the migration team. These fundamental difficulties in migration are a common barrier to successful hybrid cloud infrastructure.

Limited operational consistency

Enterprise IT organisations ranked the consistent management of workflows as the most important attribute in their hybrid cloud environments. A lack of operational consistency between environments makes it difficult to monitor and automate processes, especially when building automations that span premises.

Dissimilar tools and frameworks

The perceived effort and cost to govern and audit hybrid environments are seen as outweighing the benefit. Each public cloud IaaS provider has different workflow and management tools. IT organisations cite concerns with the lack of unified tools, especially in security monitoring and management across all providers, and regulatory constraints were seen as the second most cited reason not to host workloads in a public cloud environment.

Despite these challenges, organisations’ abilities to master a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environment will be a key contributor to company success or failure. The ability to integrate and manage such cloud environments will be a fundamental requirement for operating – not just as an IT organisation but as a business.

The solution: VMware Cloud on AWS

IT decision-makers responsible for infrastructure, operations, architecture or applications development can easily and seamlessly migrate applications to the cloud. VMware Cloud on AWS allows IT to leverage a consistent infrastructure platform for all applications, whether in the cloud or on premises. Once the applications have been migrated to VMware Cloud on AWS, they can easily modernise those applications, incrementally transforming them with modern frameworks. Addressing the Consistency gap- VMware Cloud on AWS is designed to deliver a hybrid cloud environment that is consistent with and manageable by the familiar VMware tools and workflows used in many private cloud environments. Why VMware Cloud on AWS- According to a Total Economic Impact study by Forrester Consulting, customers of VMware Cloud on AWS have been able to achieve:

Savings of more than $1,000 per virtual machine in migration costs
Savings of over $2.7 million by avoiding application rearchitecting
Reductions in data centre operating costs of more than $1.4 million
Reductions in infrastructure and operational costs of 59% by migrating to the cloud vs. same-capacity deployment on premises

Overall, the average enterprise studied by Forrester Consulting achieved net savings of more than $4.48 million over a three-year period and a return on investment of 108% by migrating and modernising with VMware Cloud on AWS.

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