AWS re:Invent: VMware Beta Program for VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts

At AWS re:Invent 2019, VMware, Inc. demonstrated how customers are selecting VMware Cloud on AWS to migrate and modernize their applications.

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts: Solution Overview

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Customers adopting VMware Cloud on AWS include 888 Holdings PLC, AIT Worldwide Logistics, Inc., Department of Customer Service NSW, Employers Preferred Insurance Co, Equinix, Inc., Optage, Inc., and ZENRIN DataCom Co., Ltd, all of which are taking advantage of VMware’s cloud infrastructure and operations to reduce the cost, complexity and risk of moving VMware-based applications to the cloud. The company is also opening a beta program for the forthcoming VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts.

VMware Cloud on AWS is a jointly engineered service that brings VMware’s enterprise software-defined data center capabilities to AWS, with optimized access to AWS services. The service offers fast cloud migration, powered by VMware HCX and vMotion combined with hybrid cloud infrastructure and operations. Once applications are migrated, customers can extend the capabilities of applications through integration of native AWS services, such as S3, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), and Amazon SageMaker. Customers can run containers and Kubernetes on VMware Cloud on AWS with VMware PKS, and in the future, leverage Project Pacific, which will transform vSphere into a Kubernetes native platform. Through technology such as Bitfusion and partnerships with companies such as NVIDIA, customers will be able to enrich existing applications and power modern enterprise applications with AI/ML and data analytics workflows through GPU acceleration services.

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts Beta is Open
VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts will bring hyperscale cloud infrastructure and services to the data center in a jointly engineered solution that can eliminate the customer burden of managing on-premises hardware. VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts will be a fully-managed VMware SDDC as a service powered by VMware Cloud Foundation that includes a set of software-defined services for compute, storage, networking, security, and cloud management running on AWS Outposts hardware in customers’ data centers or co-location facilities. The VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts beta program¹ is open to a select set of customers in the US region. Interested parties can nominate themselves for the program and you can read the blog about VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts.

VMware Cloud on AWS Customers Share Their Stories
888 Holdings PLC is a popular online gaming entertainment and solutions providers.

The company said: “We operate in a highly regulated industry that has stringent data security and DR requirements. We built out a new on-prem data center based on VMware Cloud Foundation, using NSX for advanced security through micro-segmentation. VMware Cloud on AWS gives us a cost-effective DR option built on the same consistent cloud infrastructure. With VMware Site Recovery and leveraging AWS Direct Connect, we’re able to protect 100’s of workloads and 100TBs of data and meet our mandated five minute recovery point objective.“

AIT Worldwide Logistics, Inc. is a transportation management company with a flexible business model to deliver tailored supply chain solutions for sea, air and ground freight. Mike Tegtmeyer, VP global infrastructure and security,

The company said: “We have a long-term strategy to be out of the data center business, and the first transition we are making is with our DR environment. With VMware Cloud on AWS managed by Rackspace, we are implementing cloud-based DR as a Service that will enable us to more cost-effectively maintain continuity of operations and reduce the overall risk to our business. We will also be able to establish burstable capacity based on usage, and utilize Rack Connect Global to provide LAN speed connectivity between a geo-adjacent data center and our current on-prem mainframe.“

The Department of Customer Service NSW functions as a service provider which supports sustainable government finances, major public works and maintenance programs, government procurement, information and communications technology, corporate and shared services, consumer protection, and land and property administration of the government in New South Wales, Australia.

Richard Harvey, senior manager cloud services, Department of Customer Service NSW, said: “Working with VMware business partner, Tracer Cloud, we were able to migrate not only our most critical customer-facing applications to the public cloud, but thanks to the security and compliance of the VMware Cloud on AWS solution, we were also able to move applications that were originally flagged for private cloud. This allowed us to use public cloud solutions such as elastic file storage, and now places us in an excellent position to easily transform applications into other AWS cloud solutions in the future. We needed a knowledgeable partner to support us on this journey because we had an aggressive timeframe. Tracer Cloud designed and delivered our VMware Cloud on AWS solution with Megaport connectivity to provide a flexible, robust, scalable solution that was available in days, not months. Tracer Cloud and VMware were able to build the environment as a PoC, which gave us 60 days to prove the concept at a relatively low price before going into a production environment.“

Employers Preferred Insurance Co provides workers’ compensation insurance and services for small businesses in low-to-medium hazard industries.

Jeff Shaw, EVP and CIO, Employers, said: “With VMware Cloud on AWS, we’ve become more agile, efficient and secure. We successfully migrated 350 applications to the cloud in less than one year. In several instances, migrations scheduled to take several days were completed in a matter of hours. We plan to use VMware Cloud on AWS for DR as a service, which is much more cost-effective and operationally efficient than our previous on-prem, self-managed system. For our DevOps teams and developers, application deployments that used to take six to nine months are now done in only two weeks. This rapid digital transformation, made possible by our move to a cost-effective, high-performance and secure environment in VMware Cloud on AWS has strengthened the relationships between IT and the business.“

Equinix, Inc. is an interconnection and data center company that connects the businesses to their customers, employees and partners.

Milind Wagle, SVP, CIO, Equinix, said: “Equinix is using VMware Cloud on AWS to easily and rapidly migrate our on-premises application footprint to the cloud. As a key component in our company’s cloud-first infrastructure strategy, Equinix is using VMware Cloud on AWS with AWS Direct Connect to accelerate our digital transformation efforts and provide our enterprise customers with new capabilities faster, improved service uptime and redundancy benefits.“

Optage, Inc. is an information and telecommunications company providing optical fiber network services to individuals and enterprises, and also operates MVNO and energy services.

Kiyoshi Fukui, systems infrastructure team, platform equipment construction department, Optage, said: “We adopted VMware Cloud on AWS because it combines the unique flexibility of the public cloud with same infrastructure and operational procedures as our on-premises VMware environments. We can now respond to unplanned resource requests from business-facing system administrators. With Stretched Clusters, we’re able to maintain business uptime and resiliency, and VMware HCX provides a valuable tool for moving workloads between our data center and the cloud without any disruption.“

ZENRIN DataCom Co., Ltd provides map and navigation services by combining search engines and various content data based on Zenrin Group’s map assets.

Daisuke Watanabe, deputy GM of technology planning dept. technical division, ZENRIN DataCom, said: “AWS is our preferred cloud provider of choice, however, we needed an environment that could support the large investment we had made in our existing VMware environment. Refactoring applications and retraining all our staff in order to move to the cloud would not be cost effective. This made VMware Cloud on AWS the perfect fit for us. We’ve migrated 700 VMs and will eventually have more than 1,500 VMs running in VMware Cloud on AWS. We didn’t have to modify our applications, nor change their operation, and using L2 extension and vMotion, we migrated without changing the IP addresses. We are already experiencing higher storage I/O performance, and from a cost perspective, we believe that without VMware Cloud on AWS, our development costs may have been double or triple.“

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¹Legal notice: there is no commitment or obligation that products released in beta will become available