At VMworld 2019 Europe in Barcelona this week, an announcement that VMware Cloud on AWS will be launching in the AWS EU (Stockholm) region had long-term implications for South Africa.
AWS regions are geographic locations where the cloud giant has a cluster of data centres, with 19 infrastructure regions opened by the end of last year. South Africa will join this family in the first half of next year, with Cape Town due to become the first AWS infrastructure region in Africa.
VMware Cloud on AWS, which manages the migration of companies to the AWS cloud, is now available in five of these regions in Europe and 17 globally. This suggests that the service rolls out in the wake of AWS regions opening up.
VMware did not confirm South African availability for next year, but it would fit into the momentum of the service.
“Every region we launch as VMware Cloud on AWS is an investment for VMware, and that investment needs a specific amount of connected revenue or value,” said Ian Jansen van Rensburg, senior systems engineering manager for Sub Saharan Africa at VMware. In an interview with Gadget at VMworld, he said the company would “review its ability to launch VMware on AWS in the South African region” when the AWS region is opened next year.
“If there is enough value and revenue for us we will do so, and if there is customer demand. If not, it will be revalued as we move along.
“We’re following in their footsteps, and clearly there will be enough demand. But it won’t just be opened up in conjunction with their opening up. We will have to evaluate whether it’s worthwhile for VMware to run on top of their presence in South Africa, which I have no doubt it would.”
VMware also announced new capabilities for the company’s flagship hybrid cloud service, which it said will enable both customers and partners to drive greater value from the consistent infrastructure and operations delivered by VMware Cloud on AWS.
Vmware said in a statement: “Customers can quickly create and scale their Kubernetes clusters. In addition, they can minimize disruptions to applications by easily rolling back any incompatible updates. With additional support from VMware’s expert Kubernetes Architect Team, customers can architect and deploy a Kubernetes platform that is customized to their needs, and ready their in-house team to operate a cloud-native infrastructure. In the future, VMware Cloud on AWS customers will also be able to leverage Project Pacific, which will transform VMware vSphere into a Kubernetes native platform.”
Click here to read about how customers like a major betting organisation and a government department are leveraging VMware Cloud on AWS
William Hill, one of the world’s leading betting and gaming companies, is an early adopter of VMware Cloud on AWS, and offers a good case study in how the service can be leveraged.
“Cloud is at the heart of our business; it’s the only way we can transform and achieve our business objectives. We have a two-year plan to move all applications to the public cloud,” said Sarah Lucas, the company’s head of platforms and infrastructure. “VMware Cloud on AWS provides William Hill with a more secure and agile hybrid cloud platform built on consistent infrastructure and operations. With VMware Cloud on AWS, William Hill is migrating workloads quickly with no refactoring, allowing us to meet our data centre evacuation and cloud migration timelines.
“The speed of migrations, and the operational efficiency we have gained by leveraging our existing VMware processes, skills and tools allow us to more easily meet the dynamic capacity requirements of key sporting events like the Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National.”
A somewhat different case study is offered by the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the UK’s biggest public service department, responsible for welfare, pensions and child maintenance policy.
“Three years ago, much of our IT was outsourced and we were suffering under monolithic contracts with 12 to 24-month delivery cycles, limited flexibility, and no control. We wanted to take back control of IT,” said Steven Prescott-Jones, who goes by the title, OPH Lead- Hybrid Cloud at the DWP.
“VMware Cloud on AWS gives us complete control of a modern hybrid cloud environment, with consistent infrastructure and operations that empower us to place applications in the best possible environments, whether that’s on-premises or in the cloud. We can now take advantage of a genuine consumption-based model where we’re paying only for what we need, ensuring our platforms are now cost-optimised, and we are lowering operational expenses through automated provisioning and streamlined management. Most importantly, our applications perform better for our users.”
Click here to read about VMware Cloud Director, and availability of all these services.
VMware also announced Cloud Director, a new solution that will enable VMware Cloud on AWS managed service providers (MSPs) to better address the requirements of small- and medium-sized businesses.
The company said in a statement: “VMware Cloud Director brings multi-tenant capabilities to VMware Cloud on AWS, allowing MSPs to share VMware Cloud on AWS instances and the overall costs, across multiple tenants. VMware Cloud Director service will provide cross-site networking capabilities with existing vCloud Director infrastructures, thereby creating a hyper-distributed provider management plane. Cloud providers will have the ability to slice and dice VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC resources, and have fine-grained control of resource allocation and consumption. Cloud providers will also be able to offer customers with a custom branded user experience.”
Availability
The following capabilities are expected to be available in VMware by 31 January 2020: VMware Cloud on AWS availability in AWS EU (Stockholm) Region, VMware PKS with VMware Cloud on AWS, HCX OS Assisted Migration, HCX cross-SDDC, and inter-cloud migration. VMware Cloud Director service is expected to be in beta by then.