Hervé Renault, VP of Cloud, EMEA, VMware
In today’s business landscape, every organization is looking for a unique advantage that sets them apart. That secret sauce that helps them stand out from their competitors and survive and thrive in a turbulent market.
Cloud is fast establishing itself as this magic ingredient. Every day, more and more companies are benefiting from the cost savings, scalability, flexibility and resilience of the cloud, in their pursuit of breakthrough innovation and increased productivity. And yet, it still has so much untapped potential as a technology. Today, more than three quarters of enterprise applications are still managed on premises, and there are 70 million+ virtual machines (VMs) in data centers, with the total number of applications set to explode over the next few years. Cloud technology is still young, and there’s a long journey ahead. So how do we capitalize on this opportunity?
Unpacking the partnership
VMware’s partnership with AWS is a start. The two companies’ strategic collaboration commenced in 2016, and VMware Cloud on AWS was officially launched less than a year later. Fast forward 7 years – it’s now the world’s fastest, safest, most cost-effective route to cloud, offering increased operability and accelerated time to market, making it the de facto platform for cloud-based innovation. It also remains VMware’s only jointly engineered VMware Cloud solution with a public cloud provider.
It’s a strategic partnership that goes from strength to strength. Hundreds of AWS and VMware engineers, support personnel, and sales teams work together to continually develop our joint solution. Both companies are investing heavily to recruit and train more dedicated sales specialists, solution architects, and customer success teams so our customers continue to get the maximum benefits from their cloud investment. And that’s before we mention the 600 channel partners globally that have achieved their VMware Cloud on AWS Master Services competency, plus the 300 now offering certified technology solutions that sit on top of the platform through our partner ecosystem.
Accelerating advantages
But what exactly makes our partnership so strong? I recently sat down with Tanuja Randery, Vice President and GM for AWS EMEA, and Luigi Freguia, Senior Vice President and GM for VMware in EMEA to discuss just that, and we covered a huge amount of ground, as you can see below:
Tanuja in particular pointed out how easy it now is for customers to push the boundaries of what’s possible with VMC on AWS, but three key benefits really stand out in her eyes.
The first of these is speed to innovation, via accelerated migrations that maintain operational consistency and flexibility. We’re seeing many customers having reduced their multi-year migration plans down to months or even weeks, and in some cases at speeds exceeding 500 instance migrations per week – all while leveraging existing VMware tools, skill sets, and governance across on-premises and cloud environments. Add improved workload portability, with customers able to easily move workloads back and forth between on-premises and cloud, giving you a platform that has the ability to securely build, run and manage game-changing apps with unparalleled ease and simplicity.
The second benefit is enhanced competitiveness while saving costs. Cost of operations is crucial when building your competitive differentiation, and VMware Cloud on AWS offers customers the flexibility to reduce costs while scaling to meet business demands. There’s no need to purchase new hardware, rewrite or refactor applications, learn new skills, or change your existing model to cater for a specific type of workload. Moreover, all your applications gain high-performance access to the full range of native AWS services, enabling organizations to reduce hardware, operating, and labour costs while maximising operational resiliency. Personally, hearing Tanuja talk so passionately about how that balance of freedom and control is unlocking the path to innovation for so many customers was hugely inspiring.
The next advantage is supporting the drive towards sustainability to help reduce carbon footprints. As awareness increases, organizations are under increasing pressure to promote sustainability, both via responsible consumption and targeted technological innovation.
In VMware Cloud on AWS, organizations have the platform to do both. As well as increasing the energy efficiency of their infrastructure by hundreds of customers are already reducing the carbon footprint of their workloads by up to 88% using our technology, which typically runs on renewable energy sources. There is no need to compromise their competitiveness to make those sustainability improvements, either. Many are modernizing, protecting and scaling their applications through existing hardware investments, meaning they’re continuing to innovate while simultaneously improving the environmental credentials of their IT.
These real-world impacts , which Tanuja, Luigi and I touch on in our conversation, are a huge motivator for me. Seeing so many positive outcomes from our world-leading technology is what inspires us to do what we do and is a huge source of pride.
Keeping up the momentum
We’re not stopping there, though. After over six years of joint integration, innovation, and testing, we’re more committed than ever to strengthening VMware Cloud on AWS’ position as the world’s de facto cloud infrastructure, bringing new innovations to our customers jointly with AWS. This is only the beginning.
Learn more about VMware Cloud on AWS can help you unlock the power of the cloud, watch the full video here.
