Pat Gelsinger - CEO, VMware
After more than a week of industry speculation, VMware has finally confirmed that it has struck a deal to put its software-defined datacentre software on Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud.
The strategic alliance, announced on 13 October, sees the creation of a new platform called VMware Cloud on AWS, which will give customers the ability to run applications across VMware vSphere-based private, public, and hybrid cloud environments.
With availability in some regions set for mid-2017, VMware Cloud on AWS will be delivered, sold, and supported by VMware as an on-demand, elastically-scalable service.
"The service is expected to be available in
North America mid-2017 timeframe with invite-only betas starting in the
beginning of 2017," a spokesperson for VMware told ARN. "We expect to announce international availability soon
after GA [general availability] launch."
According to the company, pricing will be made available closer to the general availability date.
“VMware Cloud on AWS will allow VMware customers to use their existing VMware software and tools to leverage AWS’s global footprint and breadth of services, including storage, databases, analytics and more,” VMware said in a statement.
"AWS will be VMware’s primary public cloud infrastructure partner and VMware will be AWS’s primary private cloud partner," the company said.
The VMware Cloud on AWS offering, which has been jointly architected by the two companies, represents a significant investment in engineering, operations, support, and sales resources from both companies, according to VMware.
The new offering is powered by VMware’s Cloud Foundation, a unified software-defined datacentre platform that integrates VMware vSphere, VMware Virtual SAN, and NSX virtualisation technology.
The virtualisation company said that the new offering will provide access to the full range of AWS services, together with the functionality, elasticity, and security presented by the AWS Cloud infrastructure.
“VMware Cloud on AWS offers our customers the best of both worlds,” VMware CEO, Pat Gelsinger, said. “This new service will make it easier for customers to preserve their investment in existing applications and processes while taking advantage of the global footprint, advanced capabilities, and scale of the AWS public cloud."
For Gartner analyst, Michael Warrilow, the deal appears to be a timely move by both companies to prepare for the general arrival of Microsoft's hybrid cloud platform product, Microsoft Azure Stack, next year.
“The big driver that I see is that it’s both companies needing to prepare for the arrival of Azure stack next year. Azure stack means that Microsoft has Azure for public cloud, and Azure stack for private cloud," Warrilow told ARN. "Whereas VMware has virtualisation, and Amazon has public cloud.
"They need each other to compete against Microsoft. That’s the reason why it’s happened now, at this time," he said.
