Ending industry speculation, today, VMware and former rival Amazon Web Services (AWS) officially announced a partnership to provide a new hybrid cloud service dubbed, “VMware Cloud on AWS.”
The new offering, the companies say, will make it easier for customers to run applications in a consistent hybrid environment using a common set of familiar software and tools. Along with the offering, the companies say that VMware Cloud on AWS will be the primary public cloud solution delivered, sold, and supported by VMware. AWS will be VMware’s primary public cloud infrastructure partner and VMware will be AWS’s primary private cloud partner.
In a joint announcement, the companies said the strategic alliance to build and deliver an integrated hybrid offering will give customers a full software-defined data center (SDDC), enabling customers to run applications across VMware vSphere-based private, public, and hybrid cloud environments.
Available in mid-2017, VMware Cloud on AWS will be delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand service, allowing VMware customers to use their existing VMware software and tools to leverage AWS’s global services, including storage, databases, and analytics. Pricing will be made available closer to the general availability date.
Explaining their desire to partner, the companies said that most VMware customers use its software to run applications in their vSphere-based private clouds, but often these same customers are also running applications on AWS, and increasingly these customers have asked both companies to make it easier to run their existing on-premises environments alongside AWS using their VMware software and tools. VMware Cloud on AWS is a jointly architected solution that will support private-public cloud integration.
“Our customers continue to ask us to make it easier for them to run their existing data center investments alongside AWS,” said Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS, in a statement released by the company. “Most enterprises are already virtualized using VMware, and now with VMware Cloud on AWS, for the first time, it will be easy for customers to operate a consistent and seamless hybrid IT environment using their existing VMware tools on AWS, and without having to purchase custom hardware, rewrite their applications, or modify their operating model.”
VMware Cloud on AWS is supported by VMware Cloud Foundation, a unified SDDC platform that integrates VMware vSphere, VMware Virtual SAN and NSX virtualization technologies, and will provide access to AWS services.
This new service will run on next-generation, elastic, bare metal AWS infrastructure, and customers will have the ability to purchase services through their existing VMware commercial agreement and use their existing VMware software investments to secure additional loyalty discounts for their VMware Cloud on AWS hybrid environment.
The move by VMware follows another joint announcement for cloud integration earlier this year from VMware and IBM for the availability of services to expedite the movement of enterprise workloads to the cloud, and supporting customers’ movement of workloads between VMware private clouds and IBM’s SoftLayer public cloud. At the time, IBM and VMware described the ability to extend existing VMware workloads from on-premises deployments to the cloud without the cost and risk of retooling operations, re-architecting applications, and redesigning security policies as “a pressing issue.”
For more information about Amazon Web Services, go to http://aws.amazon.com.
For more about VMware, now part of Dell Technologies, go to www.vmware.com.