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VMware, Inc., a leading innovator in enterprise software, today announced VMware Cloud on AWS is now available in Europe, and will offer new capabilities to accelerate and simplify enterprise cloud migration and hybrid cloud deployments. VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS) will also enable system integrator and system outsourcer (SISO) partners, managed service providers, and solutions providers to grow their cloud business with VMware Cloud on AWS, helping their customers realize the full benefits of hybrid cloud. For more information about VMware Cloud on AWS, visit: http://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws.

Bringing together the best of VMware and AWS, VMware Cloud on AWS is uniquely architected to offer customers an operationally consistent and familiar way to run, manage, and secure applications in a hybrid cloud. By offering consistent infrastructure across this hybrid cloud, customers have greater freedom to move applications between on-premises VMware vSphere-based data centers and AWS, and accelerate cloud migrations. VMware Cloud on AWS also provides access to a broad range of innovative AWS services including compute, databases, analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), security, mobile, application services, and more. VMware Cloud on AWS customers have access to the same cloud management solutions and services proven in the data center, extending their tools, policies, and expertise for managing and securing mission-critical applications in the public cloud.

“Since launching VMware Cloud on AWS just six months ago, we’ve seen tremendous interest from our global customer base and multi-national enterprises. Today marks an essential starting point for our global expansion to deliver unparalleled hybrid cloud services in major geographies around the world,” said Mark Lohmeyer, vice president and general manager, Cloud Platform Business Unit, VMware. “The VMware and AWS teams are driving a phenomenal pace of innovation, delivering the third major update, with many compelling new capabilities and use-cases, in just six months. Customers across virtually every industry are adopting VMware Cloud on AWS because it gives them a scalable, operationally consistent hybrid cloud that meets their most business-critical use cases.”

“Customers have been asking us to bring VMware Cloud on AWS to Europe, and we are excited to be doing that today in the UK. Working together, VMware and AWS are delivering deeper AWS integration so that customers won’t have to manage their own storage and database services,” said Matt Garman, vice president of AWS Compute Services. “For example, Scripps Network Interactive, a VMware Cloud on AWS customer, is integrating with Amazon S3 and Amazon RDS to further reduce costs and take advantage of their stored data to run analytics and gain better insight in the business.” 

Today, a broad range of customers of all sizes and across all industries including healthcare, transportation, financial services, manufacturing, oil & gas, government, education, professional services, and technology are actively using the service. Popular enterprise use cases include cloud migration, ranging from a single application to entire data centers; data center extension to satisfy cyclical capacity, extend to new geographies, or enable new application development and testing; and Disaster Recovery (DR), whether to replace legacy solutions, implement a new DR strategy, or protect additional workloads in the context of their existing DR solutions.

“VMware and VMware Cloud on AWS are the foundation of Brink’s global infrastructure,” said Greg Osgood, global vice president of Infrastructure and Security, Brinks, Inc. “This flexibility improves service levels to customers and is a key driver in Brink’s technology and business transformation. These systems allow the company to easily move workloads between its private cloud and the public cloud, providing agility for production services and disaster recovery. Using these VMware technologies, and with a partnership with Eastern Computer Exchange, Brink’s successfully consolidated its North America data center operations in 2017, and is planning to extend this model to Europe, Latin American, and Asia in 2018.”

Making Enterprise Cloud Migration Fast, Simple, and Secure for Modern Workloads

VMware and AWS continue to accelerate service innovation for VMware Cloud on AWS. VMware Cloud on AWS is making the onramp to the cloud much simpler for customers, enabling them to migrate current and new workloads to the cloud with the most functionality, greatest agility, and best security and performance – both on-premises and in the cloud. With this update, VMware is announcing:

• Mission-Critical Application Protections: New capabilities will protect applications against different types of failures, from data center and availability zone outages, to host and VM-level failures. VMware Cloud on AWS will provide Zero recovery point objective (RPO) high availability for any application across AWS Availability Zones (AZ) with Stretched Clusters for VMware Cloud on AWS. This unique service will significantly improve enterprise application availability without needing to architect it into the application, by leveraging powerful VMware infrastructure capabilities, enabling developers to focus on adding business value.
• Data-Intensive Application Enhancements: With the acceleration of big-data volumes in the cloud, data-intensive workloads can now take advantage of native VMware vSAN compression and deduplication to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) while benefiting from the performance of all-flash storage. It is estimated that customers can cut storage costs in half for typical workloads with native vSAN deduplication and compression while reducing idle resources with elastic, on-demand compute used only when needed. As an example, a customer with typical workloads and a 150 TB storage need can save up to $1.2 million on a VMware Cloud on AWS software-defined data center (SDDC) cluster over a three-year period, based on VMware internal testing₍₁₎.
• VMware vMotion for Workload Migration: VMware vMotion between on-premises and VMware Cloud on AWS, and between hosts across clusters within a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC is now available. VMware will also be adding vMotion between hosts in a stretched cluster across two AWS availability zones.
• Anytime, Anywhere Access to Desktops: Support for VMware Horizon will enable customers to easily deploy and run Horizon virtual desktops and applications on VMware Cloud on AWS with cloud consumption economics. VMware Horizon will enable customers to extend on-premises desktop services via the cloud without buying additional hardware, and co-locate virtual desktops or published applications near latency-sensitive applications in the cloud. Customers will be able to leverage elastic capacity as a cost-effective way to protect on-premises Horizon 7 deployments or fill temporary needs.
• Simplified Cloud Migration and Operations: VMware is making it faster and easier to setup, configure, and manage SDDC environments on VMware Cloud on AWS. Integration with AWS CloudFormation and Hashicorp Terraform enable customers to automate SDDC-level provisioning using popular and familiar DevOps tools. VMware is also introducing developer center, which is integrated into the VMware Cloud on AWS service console and offers automation experts, DevOps engineers, and developers a central portal to gain access to detailed API information, Software Development Kits, code samples, and command line interfaces. Additionally, customers will be able to accelerate initial networking configuration and improve ongoing operations with networking and security capabilities provided by VMware NSX, including Tunnel Status Monitor, Connectivity Checker, and Firewall Rule Accelerator.

Additional Support From VMware Cloud Services

VMware Cloud Services are uniquely designed to give customers the flexibility to leverage any cloud environment while providing consistent operations for how clouds are managed and secured. VMware’s growing portfolio of cloud services provides visibility, operations, automation, security, and governance across any cloud. VMware Cloud on AWS previously added support for VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension and Wavefront by VMware. In this release, VMware Cloud on AWS adds support for VMware Cost Insight and VMware Log Intelligence. Cost Insight is a software-as-a-service that enables customers to understand the true cost of migration to VMware Cloud on AWS based on real inventory data drawn from VMware vCenter.  Log Intelligence enables real-time visibility into infrastructure audit logs and application logs to isolate problems quickly for faster troubleshooting. Both Cost Insight and Log Intelligence are available as a free trial to VMware Cloud on AWS customers.

Broader Access for Enterprises, New Services, and Revenue Opportunities for Partners

With the expansion of the VMware Partner Network to include VMware Cloud on AWS, enterprises now have even broader access to the cloud service and more choice in strategic IT partners to help accelerate their cloud journey. VMware enables partners to grow their hybrid cloud business with VMware Cloud on AWS through expansion of the VMware Solution Provider and VMware Cloud Provider programs that will provide partners with training, financial incentives, access to VMware expertise, and joint marketing for solutions based on VMware Cloud on AWS. Additionally, the VMware Cloud on AWS Solution Competency is now available for partners, offering the sales and technical training required to be successful selling and managing VMware Cloud on AWS. Visit VMware’s partner page to learn more about these programs.

Working with VMware, managed services provider DXC Technology will be launching one of the first new portfolios of managed services for VMware Cloud on AWS. These services will enable clients to achieve lower cost and increased flexibility by taking advantage of VMware Cloud on AWS. DXC’s managed services offerings, including application migration & transformation services, leverage the integrated VMware Hybrid Cloud stack to deliver greater agility, innovation, and cost efficiency allowing clients to realize the benefit of hybrid cloud.

Availability

Services in the AWS EU (London) region, VMware vSAN deduplication and compression, AWS CloudFormation and Hashicorp Terraform integration are all available today. Stretched Clusters for VMware Cloud on AWS, vMotion between hosts in a stretched cluster across two AWS Availability Zones, VMware Horizon support, Tunnel Status Monitor, Connectivity Checker, and Firewall Rule Accelerator are in preview₍₂₎. To view the latest status of features for VMware Cloud on AWS, visit: https://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws/roadmap.