We continue to find ourselves in rapidly changing, unsettling times, with risks of recession and an energy crisis gripping the continent. At the same time, the acute digital shortage continues to bite and a constant and growing threat of ransomware attacks has everyone on high alert. With this backdrop, technology-related issues such as digitalisation and cybersecurity have ranked second (to business growth) in Gartner’s top ten strategic priorities for 2022-2023.
Businesses want to leverage cloud computing because it’s the number one enabler of the shift to digital. But first, they need to consider faster and smarter ways to use cloud technology that will help them to achieve the cost savings, scalability, flexibility and resilience that are needed to combat some of the challenges listed above. This starts with tapping into the partnerships in the market that are fiercely committed to making IT modernisation easier for businesses.
What’s top of mind for today’s leaders?
We understand that transforming existing enterprise applications into cloud-native equivalents can be extremely difficult, especially when conflicting objectives come into the equation. When I sat down with Tanuja Randery, Vice President and GM for AWS EMEA, to discuss today’s business crunch points, she remarked that one of the biggest questions from CEOs is, “Where do I find the digital skills to help me migrate applications to the cloud?”.
Only a small percentage of workloads have moved to the cloud, so it’s important that customers have on-demand access to the right capabilities and skills for cloud use, while advancing their business and ESG goals. The enduring and deep partnership between VMware and AWS can help organisations meet some of these.
The power of VMware and AWS
VMware Cloud on AWS is built using the same core fundamentals that customers use to build their on-premises infrastructure (such as private cloud, once it’s full automated and modernised). Infrastructure teams can therefore use their existing knowledge and toolsets to manage cloud-based resources. There is no need to hire new talent, drastically retrain existing staff, maintain large teams or revamp processes to benefit from the agility, scale and innovation of public cloud.
With VMware Cloud on AWS, innovation doesn’t have to stall the ambition of hitting your sustainability goals. Time is often the biggest commodity when it comes to enhancing ESG strategies, and by reducing the time and cost burden of managing hardware, business leaders are empowered to refocus their resources elsewhere. In fact, many of our customers have shortened their multi-year migration plans to months or even weeks. Furthermore, we want to ensure that – as awareness of the climate crisis grows – we continue to offer energy efficient solutions that enable our customers to harness unlimited cloud computing resources and respond to the rapidly changing economic conditions they must address. With VMware Cloud on AWS now saving organisations up to 73% of their ordinary power consumption, we believe that together, we can do just that.
The VMware and AWS partnership also enables organisations to build for the future with minimal security risk. Typically, migrating data and apps to public cloud environments that are separate from on-premises infrastructure requires refactoring, causing vulnerabilities in the process. And the risk is getting higher. According to Accenture, the average organisation faced 270 cyber-attacks in 2021, up 31% on the previous year, and in a study by Proofpoint, 80% of UK businesses infected with ransomware ultimately paid the ransom. With ransomware attacks the most common cause of organisations needing to make a disaster recovery (DR) plan, business leaders need to act now, and fast.
With VMware Cloud on AWS, established on-premises enterprise security, governance and operational policies can be leveraged, preventing businesses from becoming another ransomware victim. What’s more, seamless access to native AWS services means key data and apps can be run in your existing data centre storage, networking and security infrastructure, thereby maximising your cloud investment. Read how two companies are leading the charge when it comes to ensuring business continuity with VMware Disaster Recovery: online French furniture retailer, Vente-Unique and Swiss media house, Woche-Pass.
An opportune future
If I took one important nugget from my conversation with Tanuja, it’s how mindset, skills and culture are equally, if not more important than the technology, as businesses transform. Our alliance is offering not only an opportunity to drive more innovation and accelerate the journey towards new applications, but also to change perception of market challenges into promising opportunities.
Watch our video here to learn more about how VMC on AWS can help you unlock the power of the cloud.
