VMware debuts VMware Cloud on AWS in Australia, cuts entry price

VMware has taken the wraps off its VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Australia in a widely anticipated move that is expected to raise the supplier’s standing among Australian enterprises operating in an increasingly hybrid cloud environment.

First announced at VMworld 2017, VMware Cloud on AWS lets enterprises running VMware’s vSphere-based software stack harness AWS’s bare metal infrastructure to power their applications, expand their datacentre footprint and facilitate disaster recovery.

AWS executives had claimed that the service was more cost-effective than other hybrid cloud offerings, with further savings if enterprises took up one-year or three-year subscriptions, with savings of 30% and 50%, respectively.

Based on VMware’s estimates, the total cost of ownership (TCO) – in terms of cost per virtual machine per hour – could range from $0.06 to $0.09, depending on an organisation’s infrastructure consolidation ratio. In contrast, the TCO for on-premise infrastructure would be between $0.10 and $0.17, depending on the IT environment, according to VMware.

To sweeten the deal further, VMware said it is reducing the entry price for VMware Cloud on AWS by half, and will offer a smaller three-host minimum software-defined datacentre configuration as a starting point for production workloads. For a limited time, VMware will also offer the three-host environment for the cost of a two-host configuration.

In addition, enterprises running Oracle and Microsoft applications will be able to specify just the number of CPU cores they need, reducing the cost of running applications that are licensed per CPU core. They will also be able to pin workloads to a specific host group to support licensing requirements, VMware said.

In improving the performance of hybrid cloud infrastructures, VMware and AWS have also integrated NSX and AWS Direct Connect to enable private and consistent connectivity between VMware workloads running on VMware Cloud on AWS and those running on-premises, accelerating cloud migrations and supporting multi-tier hybrid applications.

“Customers have been asking us to bring VMware Cloud on AWS to Asia-Pacific, and we are pleased to be doing that today,” said Sandy Carter, vice-president for EC2 Windows enterprise workloads at AWS.

“VMware Cloud on AWS is the only hybrid cloud service that allows vSphere customers to leverage consistent infrastructure across on-premises datacentres and AWS, allowing them to migrate current and new workloads to the cloud with the most functionality, greatest agility, and best security and performance,” she added.

One of the early adopters of VMware Cloud on AWS in Australia is ME, a supplier of personal and business banking products and services.

“One of ME’s key focuses is on consistently delivering frictionless, personalised banking services that meet our customer promises,” said Sunny Avdihodzic, general manager for strategy and architecture at ME.

“As we explore the VMware Cloud on AWS technology and its capabilities, we’re excited by the potential opportunity to enable development and deployment of new services and resources faster than ever before, while mitigating the risk to our business,” he added.

Paul Migliorini, managing director of AWS in Australia and New Zealand, said with about 90% of Australian organisations having virtualised their infrastructure with VMware, nearly every one of them is looking to leverage the public cloud to innovate or remediate their legacy environments.

“There are a lot of enterprises in Australia that see the benefits of leveraging the AWS platform, whether it’s for innovation around machine learning or to get greater agility,” Migliorini told Computer Weekly.

“But they have also made a big investment in VMware capabilities and toolsets, and they want to be able to leverage the benefits of the public cloud without having to reskill fully. We think the VMware relationship will be a really important one, particularly in the context of hybrid conversations, for years to come.”