VMware this week announced that the VMware Cloud Director service that managed service providers (MSPs) rely on to manage instances of VMware is now available on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud. Available only to VMware partners, VMware Cloud Director enables MSPs to set up self-service virtual data centers on behalf of their clients.
The AWS option provides MSPs with a “pay-as-you-grow” model that reduces the level of upfront investment required to deliver a managed service, says Mark Lohmeyer, senior vice president and general manager for the cloud services business unit at VMware.
VMware this week revealed there are more than 500 channel partners that have achieved a VMware Cloud on AWS service competency, including 43 that have a Master Services Competency. There are also more than 300 certified or validated technology solutions available to VMware Cloud on AWS customers, including a previously promised VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid service that enables IT teams to manage any distribution of Kubernetes.
“The partnership between VMware and AWS continues to deepen,” says Lohmeyer.
The Dell Technologies business unit has also announced its intent to acquire Datrium, a provider of disaster recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) which will become part of the VMware Site Recovery service once the deal closes.
VMware also announced it is making available a technology preview of VMware Transit Connect to create a connectivity fabric across VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs, Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (Amazon VPCs), and on-premises environments.
Finally, VMware announced this week it is making available a two-host cluster option on AWS, which lowers by 33% the cost of entry from a previous three host requirement, along with a new host type based on 2nd generation Intel® Xeon Scalable Processors that deliver four times more raw storage capacity at roughly half the cost per GB of storage per host.
The VMware Cloud on AWS service is now available in 17 AWS Regions worldwide. On average, VMware claims end customers can now configure clusters in less than two hours. That’s become a critical requirement because the rate at which workloads are migrating into the cloud has increased substantially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A recent survey of 5,000 business decision-makers, IT decision-makers and application developers conducted by the market research firm Vanson Bourne on behalf of VMware finds 80% of respondents said organizations must modernize the technologies they use to develop and deploy software to be more successful.
It’s not clear to what degree those modernized workloads as they are migrated to the cloud will continue to run on VMware virtual machines given all the options IT organizations have at their disposal to achieve that goal. However, in many cases where organizations already have substantial investments in VMware management frameworks it’s clear AWS has become a preferred path of least resistance.
Be First to Comment