VMware Cloud on AWS momentum starts to swell

Following a few early VMware missteps, it would appear that cloud momentum surrounding VMware, on the eve of the annual VMworld conference next week, is finally starting to increase.

A survey of 1,156 IT and business professionals published today by Faction, a provider of managed services, finds 29 percent plan to increase workloads on VMware Cloud on AWS in the next 12 months. Of that number, 15 percent hope to start running workloads, while 14 percent want to increase the number of workloads already deployed. Among those planning to migrate workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS, 23 percent are aiming to do so in the next 12 months, while 26 percent will migrate in 12 to 24 months.

Motivations for adopting VMware Cloud on AWS

Among organizations currently using VMware Cloud on AWS, the primary reasons cited for adopting VMware Cloud on AWS are data center extension (49 percent), cloud migration (46 percent), AWS integrated applications (35 percent), and disaster recovery (33 percent). Among organizations planning to adopt VMware Cloud for AWS, the top drivers are scalability (54 percent), strategic initiatives (49 percent), cost savings (45 percent), data center extension (39 percent), disaster recovery (32 percent), and cloud migration (19 percent).

The top VMware Cloud on AWS migration challenges cited by those that have already migrated were executing the actual migration (29 percent), assessing workloads (20 percent), and finding experienced personnel (19 percent). The top usage challenges cited are cost management (51 percent), network complexity (37 percent) and AWS prerequisites (27 percent). The study notes that 55 percent of the respondents who currently run workloads on-premises are considering VMware Cloud on AWS. 

MSPs have been closely watching VMware’s progress in the cloud

VMware Cloud for AWS is a managed service provided directly by VMware. However, there are MSPs that only focus on applications. VMware has been encouraging those MSPs to incorporate either VMware Cloud for AWS or a similar managed service offering for Dell EMC platforms deployed in on-premises IT environments.

VMware has also been making a case for MSPs focused in one region to employ the company’s managed services to extend their reach into other regions. In all, VMware has more than 4,000 partners providing managed services via the cloud. Those relationships are likely to become more complex as VMware extends its managed services ambitions to other public clouds.

The rate of adoption of VMware Cloud for AWS has been impacted by two primary factors. The first is VMware was initially reluctant to embrace public cloud providers as a partner. The second is the rate at which organizations are transferring legacy monolithic workloads running in on-premises IT environments to a public cloud is not nearly as aggressive as initially predicted. In contrast, most new application workloads are being deployed on public clouds, usually on top of virtual machines other than VMware.

As far as VMware’s own efforts in the cloud are concerned, the jury is still out. Many MSPs have been managing instances of VMware running on public clouds with little to no help from VMware for a long time now. Most of those MSPs will continue to do so, regardless of what VMware does one way or the other.

Photo: Jason Leung / Unsplash