We share the stories of two very different customers – one in entertainment, the other in law – who are using VMware Cloud on AWS to accelerate their journey to cloud. In doing so, they are realizing tangible savings and business benefits.
“Strange days, indeed“, sang John Lennon on the album Milk and Honey. These lyrics come back to me again and again as I think about COVID-19, Crazy US elections etc., in the United States and beyond. For all the struggles, change and turmoil, there are bright spots. For me, working in Cloud Economics, a real highlight is when I see customers doing amazing things with our products.
In my last article, I shared how a scientific equipment manufacturer and a mid-sized school district both realized significant savings by moving to VMware Cloud on AWS. This week, I’m delighted to share the stories of two more customers on similar journeys.
From the “Let’s Put on A Show” department
Our first customer is an entertainment firm in the United States, with roughly $10 billion in annual revenue and 10,000 employees. The company wanted to move to a cloud-first strategy – with plans to exit at least one of its two costly data centers in front of an internal network overhaul the following year.
Initially, the plan was to go 100 percent cloud native. But then they did the math. When they looked at the workloads they wanted to move to the cloud, they realized it would take way too long with the strategy they had planned – which was a fully AWS-native deployment. Instead, the move would occur much faster using VMware Cloud on AWS and the HCX add-on. Over about eight months, the organization migrated predominately back-end database applications from one of its data centers – moving 210 virtual machines and 40 applications to its new environment consisting of eight VMware Cloud on AWS nodes.
The strategy paid off. They successfully exited their data center and met the goal of moving to the cloud on time. The results speak for themselves – here are some highlights:
- By retiring a data center, they have saved millions in ongoing operating costs
- By avoiding refactoring apps, they accelerated their cloud journey
“VMware on AWS lets us achieve our goal of getting out of the data center, without moving directly to EC2 [Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud]. We avoid a lot of disruption in terms of operation and setup. We don’t have to maintain network, servers, and storage in the data center, and we’ve kept all of our compliance that we did when running on-premises.”
Head of infrastructure
Read more about their results here.
From the “Legal Eagle” department
Our second customer is a law firm in the United States, with 15 locations and 260 employees. The organization’s VMware on AWS deployment has one cluster with six hosts. Primary production consists of 12 production servers and 280 instant clones managed by VMware Horizon.
The law firm was growing fast. They were using VMware Cloud on AWS as a disaster recovery solution, backing up every new branch they opened. Yet, the firm soon realized that as a heavy user of VMware, they could move production assets to the cloud with VMware Cloud on AWS. In doing so, they would strengthen disaster recovery capabilities and efficiently support expansion of the business.
By bringing their workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS, the company eliminated the need to refactor virtual machines for a new architecture. In doing so, the company realized both time and cost savings:
- They reduced new server purchases by 100%
- They now have the flexibility to expand
- Reduced effort to maintain and provision IT resources
- And much more
“Why do I need to look at my data centers on the ground as primary and my disaster recovery solution in the cloud? Why not reverse that thought process? Put my production resources in the cloud on a global data center-quality service, backed by VMware on AWS, where I still have full control over the deployment of my internal resources from a vCenter standpoint.”
CIO
Read more about their results here.
From the “Speaking For Themselves” Department
Nobody told me there’d be days like these. With all that’s going on in the world, it’s a nice distraction to see customers gaining real value from the products I work on daily. And the results in these documents speak for themselves. If you are interested in finding out how much you could save, try our VMware Cloud on AWS TCO Calculator.
To learn more about VMware Cloud on AWS, here are some learning resources. Or, you can get started now with VMware Cloud on AWS by purchasing the service online.
Resources
- You can learn more about our VMware Cloud on AWS service at the VMware Cloud on AWS website or by viewing VMware Cloud on AWS: Overview
- Learn about VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US)
- Follow us on Twitter @vmwarecloudaws and give us a shout with #VMWonAWS
- Watch informative demos, overview videos, webinars and hear from our customers: VMware Cloud on AWS on YouTube
- Try the VMware Cloud on AWS Lightning Lab for a first-hand immersive experience
- Read our latest VMware Cloud on AWS blogs
- Obtain the VMware Cloud on AWS Solution Brief, VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US) 1 Pager and VMware Cloud on AWS TCO 1-pager
- Follow the VMware Cloud on AWS release notes on continuing updates
- Visit VMware Cloud Tech Zone for technical articles, guides, videos and more
- Listen to latest episodes of VMware Cloud on AWS Unplugged Podcast
