VMware Cloud on AWS: Winner of CRN’s 2020 Products of The Year: Best Hybrid Cloud solution based on Customer Demand – VMware Cloud Community

We’re excited to let you know that VMware Cloud on AWS is named winner of the Customer Demand Subcategory under Hybrid Cloud in CRN’s 2020 Products Of The Year. The recognition of this award highlights how VMware Cloud on AWS has garnered real-world satisfaction among customers and partners with its agility, innovation and flexibility.

VMware Cloud on AWS brings VMware’s enterprise class Software-Defined Data Center software to the AWS Cloud and enables customers to run production applications across vSphere®-based private, public and hybrid cloud environments, with optimized access to AWS services and robust disaster protection. Jointly engineered by VMware and AWS, this on-demand service enables IT teams to seamlessly extend, migrate and manage their cloud-based resources with familiar VMware tools.

Today, a broad range of organizations of all sizes across all geographies and across all industries including healthcare, media and entertainment, transportation, financial services, manufacturing, oil and gas, government, education, professional services, and technology have been using the service for variety of use cases such as Cloud migration, Disaster Recovery, Data Center Extension and Application modernization. You can learn more about the customer stories in this blog series. According to recent study by IDC[1], VMware customers were able to reduce their cost of migration by 57% and were able to migrate 46% faster compared to other native cloud options. Want to learn more about this? Please check out full report here.

With 3+ years since the launch of this services, we have been releasing lots of new features and capabilities every quarter based on customer’s requirements. Here is a quick recap of some of the key capabilities that we added to the service in 2020 to address the needs of our customers:

• 2-host production cluster: With the ability to create production cluster with just 2 hosts, customers can deploy production environments with 2 hosts in a cluster. This lowers the cost of getting started with a minimum production cluster based on the i3.metal instance type by ~33% and broadens the access of the service to small and mid-sized enterprises
• VMware Cloud Director service: It delivers multi-tenancy to VMware Cloud on AWS for managed service providers (MSP) to serve the needs of small to mid-size enterprises and is available globally. It enables MSPs to offer bite-sized pools of VMware Cloud on AWS resources in an asset-light, pay-as-you-grow model to better align with the needs of small to mid-size enterprises.
• Amazon EC2 i3en.metal for VMware Cloud on AWS: VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC clusters based on i3en.metal instance type are optimized for data-intensive workloads requiring high random I/O access such as relational databases and workloads that require end to end security. As compared to i3.metal instance type, customers get more compute, more RAM, more usable, high-performance storage and more security. Each dollar investment in the i3en.metal can yield a 31% increase in performance value over the i3.metal instance
• VMware Transit Connect: VMware Transit Connect will deliver a VMware-managed, easy-to-use, scalable and performant Layer 3 connectivity solution between VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs that are designated within an SDDC group leveraging AWS Transit Gateway that provides high-bandwidth, low latency and resilient connectivity solution. It will enable connectivity between an SDDC group and multiple Amazon native Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs). In addition, this solution will also enable connectivity between an SDDC group and multiple on-premises environments via an AWS Direct Connect Gateway. This turn-key capability will simplify hybridity and inter connectivity across environments directly from the VMware Cloud on AWS console leveraging SDDC groups.
• Support for Kubernetes and containerized workloads: VMware Tanzu portfolio supports VMware Cloud on AWS, delivering enterprise-ready Kubernetes runtime with unified management of all your Kubernetes clusters. With Tanzu Standard edition, customers get an open-source aligned, VMware supported Kubernetes runtime for deploying on your VMware Cloud on AWS environment, with the power to centrally and consistently manage access, security and data protection of all conformant Kubernetes clusters running on VMware Cloud on AWS

So, what are you waiting for? Start your hybrid cloud journey with VMware Cloud on AWS now. If you would like to learn more about VMware Cloud on AWS, here are some learning resources for you:

[1] Source: IDC, The Business Value of Running Applications on VMware Cloud on AWS in VMware Hybrid Cloud Environments, Sponsored by VMware, October 2020