Making Migrations Manageable

Amazon Web Services has four times the number of VMware Cloud on AWS customers than it did a year ago, and those customers have deployed nine times the number of virtual machines – testament to the hybrid cloud platform’s growing momentum, according to AWS, which doesn’t release actual figures.

“We've been doubling the number of customers every quarter, so we've been doing quite well in terms of customer adoption,” AWS vice president Sandy Carter said. “We've also seen increasing traction with our partners.”

Jointly developed by AWS and VMware and launched in August 2017, the integrated cloud service allows organizations to seamlessly migrate and extend their on-premises VMware vSphere-based environments to the AWS cloud.

More than 300 channel partners have earned the VMware Cloud on AWS competency introduced in March 2018, and AWS has triple the number of validated VMware Cloud solutions from independent software vendors on its AWS Marketplace compared to a year ago, the company said.

“One of our really big success stories is MIT,” Carter said.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., is among customers using VMware Cloud on AWS. MIT migrated 3,300 virtual machines -- 550 terabytes of data -- in three months using the equivalent of one full-time employee, according to Carter.

A market survey of 1,156 information technology (IT) and business professionals released in August by Faction, a Denver managed service provider for VMware Cloud on AWS, found that 29 percent of respondents planned to start running or increase their workloads on VMware Cloud on AWS in the next 12 months. Fifty-four percent of respondents who said they’re considering VMware Cloud on AWS cited scalability as one of the top drivers, followed by strategic IT initiatives (49 percent) and cost-savings (45 percent).

Among survey respondents who already had put workloads in VMware Cloud on AWS, 51 percent said cost management was their top usage challenge, and 46 percent of those who opted against adopting it said it was too expensive.

That indicates there’s room for improvement in evaluating the total cost of ownership of VMware Cloud on AWS, Faction concluded.

“For example, organizations may be discounting their current investment in VMware tools and operational skill, or underestimating the total costs of application transformation associated with migrations to other cloud solutions,” it said.

Carter, who has been involved with VMware Cloud on AWS since its inception, addressed those cost concerns when she talked to CRN about the top 10 keys to successful VMware Cloud on AWS migrations.

“I believe a lot of that is just kind of confusion about what people are looking at in terms of price,” she said.

Here are the 10 steps that Carter recommends organizations should consider.