VMware is pleased to share the news that Azure VMware Solution, our joint offering with Microsoft that provides VMware infrastructure in Azure Government regions, has received approval to be added the Azure Government FedRAMP High provisional authorization to operate (P-ATO) by the FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board (JAB). VMware and Microsoft announced general availability of Azure VMware Solution in Azure Government earlier this year to accelerate Azure migrations for users that must operate in a cloud environment meeting U.S. Government requirements. This new FedRAMP High P-ATO approval will enable broad adoption by agencies eager to deploy VMware workloads on Azure Government.
FedRAMP – standardized protection for federal cloud users
The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) program was created to accelerate cloud adoption by consolidating the many security standards and authorizations imposed on federal agencies into a unified set of baseline requirements. With the addition of Azure VMware Solution to the services included in the Azure Government FedRAMP High P-ATO approval, federal agencies can further speed cloud adoption using fully consistent VMware Cloud infrastructure on bare-metal hosts in Azure Government data centers.
Federal agencies with IT operations on the VMware platform can migrate their VMware workloads to a FedRAMP High approved cloud – Azure Government – and run them using a native Azure service – Azure VMware Solution – sharing that FedRAMP High approval. Most importantly, those workload migrations take place with no need for slow and expensive replatforming or refactoring because they continue to run on a standard VMware foundation of vSphere, vSAN, and NSX. Equally important, IT team skills and operational processes are transferrable to the Azure VMware Solution environment. Agencies that were stalled in their cloud migration projects by the unexpected costs and delays of those app modifications and re-training will find that Azure VMware Solution is a fast and direct path to Azure Government with regulatory approvals they need already in place.
Migrate and modernize your workloads using FedRAMP approved native Azure services
Azure VMware Solution in Azure Government offers more than just a destination for rapid cloud migrations. Azure Government offers over 160 native Azure services sharing its FedRAMP High approval that you can use to enhance and extend your migrated VMware workloads. Services for identity management, storage, databases, security, monitoring, and more are all in close proximity to Azure VMware Solution over high-speed Azure backbone network connections so you can modernize your apps at your pace while meeting requirements for FedRAMP High compliance.
Azure VMware Solution public sector use cases
Data center footprint reduction and migration
Agencies can reduce their on-premises infrastructure footprint with a simple migration of their vSphere-based workloads to Azure Government in a non-disruptive, automated, and scalable fashion.
Application modernization
Developers can tap into Azure’s service and partner ecosystem and the VMware Tanzu platform to modernize applications incrementally without having to rewrite them from scratch.
Data center expansion
With flexible payment plans, agencies can quickly scale out data center capacity on-demand for seasonal, temporary, or regional needs.
Cloud desktop virtualization
Leverage high-performance infrastructure and fast networking for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) to burst on-premises VMware Horizon or other virtual desktops to the cloud or protect them against disaster.
Disaster recovery to the cloud
Use the VMware stack deployed in Azure Government as a fully consistent on-demand disaster recovery site for on-premises data center infrastructure with VMware or partner solutions.
Azure VMware Solution offers proven savings
Cloud spending is a concern of every public sector agency that is under pressure to migrate to the cloud while staying within capped or declining IT budgets. IDC’s recently published “Business Value of Azure VMware Solution” study provides convincing evidence of the savings agencies can expect to obtain, drawn from the experience of actual Azure VMware Solution enterprise users. IDC’s study documents 357% 3-year ROI, 37% lower 3-year cost of operations, and 9 months to payback among the benefits of migrating to Azure VMware Solution from an on-premises VMware infrastructure. As IDC found, “Study participants reported that the solution has provided a cost-effective, efficient, and high-performing platform that allows them to leverage existing investment and expertise in VMware and Microsoft technologies while benefiting from the agility and flexibility of the Microsoft Azure cloud.”
More accreditations to come
FedRAMP encompasses a wide range of federal cloud security requirements, but there are others important to government users being pursued by Microsoft and VMware. Microsoft has submitted Azure VMware Solution in Azure Government for Department of Defense (DoD) Impact Level 4 (IL4) and Impact Level 5 (IL5) authorization and expects approval in the first quarter of calendar 2024. Once approved for DoD IL4 and IL5 authorization, Azure VMware Solution will be added to the dozens of native Azure Government services already authorized. Our goal is to make Azure VMware Solution and Azure Government an easy choice for DoD and federal agency cloud migration projects.
Learn more
- Microsoft announcement that Azure VMware Solution has been added to the Azure Government FedRAMP High P-ATO
- Azure VMware Solution in Azure Government Expands Cloud Options for U.S. Agencies – VMware Government blog
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