Introduction
How 2020 has driven hybrid cloud adoption
Since the emergence of cloud, the enterprise IT model has been turned on its head and disruption has been witnessed across almost every industry. During the pandemic, successful cloud adoption and the inbuilt ability to bend and flex with each new challenge has set apart those companies that would survive the debilitating effects of Covid-19.
For many companies with on-premises data centres, IT staff facing lockdown restrictions and unprecedented supply chain disruption meant cloud vendors were the best option to combat the sudden expansion of resources required to satisfy their workforces’ needs. With 70% of companies reporting that half their staff were working from home, a reliance on legacy environments emerged, software that was never designed for such a large proportion As a result, digital transformation, and within that, cloud adoption became the hot topic of 2020, and seems set to continue well into 2021.
Fuelling investment in transformation
Delivering a digital advantage
While the cloud itself could be considered a journey rather than a destination, the benefits of migrating to the cloud are wholly tangible.
Organisations that have already started on this journey are reaping these benefits, including greater cost-efficiencies, faster time to market and empowering productivity though real time flexible and remote working.
Those who have moved applications and workloads from their data centres have seen significant cost efficiencies with none of the ongoing operational or maintenance costs usually associated with on-premises IT – freeing up the IT team to focus on other revenue-generating opportunities for the business.
In addition, cloud is a problem-solver. It has never been more important for organisations to be agile, and failure to do so can result in being left behind in an increasingly competitive and fast-moving business environment. The cloud can reduce time-to-market, accelerating product development and improving customer service – a key metric upon which businesses are judged today. Its scalability also means organisations can react more quickly to economic conditions, customer, or seasonal demands.
Elsewhere, the cloud enables distributed groups of people to work collaboratively, sharing information in real time. In a world where remote and flexible working is now commonplace, enterprises are using cloud solutions to unlock team members from the restrictions of office-based IT.
Get to the cloud sooner
Move quickly, easily and cost effectively with VMware Cloud on AWS
VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS) bridges the gap between private and public clouds. A jointly engineered service that brings VMware’s enterprise class software-defined data centre capabilities to AWS, with optimised access to its services, VMware Cloud on AWS offers ultra-fast cloud migration, powered by VMware HCX and vMotion, combined with consistent hybrid cloud infrastructure and operations.
VMware Cloud on AWS enables organisations to maximise their VMware investments, allowing them to quickly scale up or down capacity, without change or friction, for any workload with access to native cloud services – without the need to buy new hardware.
The release of 2-node cluster support has also lowered the cost of entry for adoption of VMware Cloud on AWS while still allowing for the ability to scale up to 200+ nodes where required. Applications that require increased I/O capabilities can take advantage of the release of new nodes including the i3en.metal which can be deployed to new or migrate existing environments.
Hybrid cloud
The best of both worlds
For some enterprises, migrating from on-premises IT to a native cloud environment can be a daunting thought.
Their concerns about migrating to the public cloud may include:
- A wholesale move to public cloud will require new teams and new skills
- Their security strategy will be ineffective when workloads are shifted to public cloud
- The move may be too complex, time consuming and costly to achieve
- They will be locked into a single cloud provider
- Incompatibility issues may put business critical legacy applications at risk
However, the emergence of hybrid cloud solutions, like VMware Cloud on AWS, offer businesses the best of both worlds. Organisations gain the flexibility and speed required to respond to changing business needs, accelerating innovation and aligning costs to business requirements. But the public cloud also integrates seamlessly with their on-premises infrastructure, enabling them to take advantage of their existing investments in IT: teams, skillsets, tools and processes.
Use Cases
Create a hybrid cloud offering that aligns to your organisations cloud strategy
Accelerate Cloud Migrations
VMware Cloud on AWS is ideal for organisations wanting to move to the cloud without the need to re-architect applications. Workloads can be moved to the cloud at scale in line with business needs. VMware Cloud on AWS lets enterprises make ‘quick wins’ when it comes to unlocking the benefits of public cloud, while allowing them to take incremental steps to consolidate their data centres over time.
- Minimises complexity and risk of transition
- Simplifies and accelerates speed of migrations
- Reduces cost of migrations
- Extends value of existing enterprise app investments
- Take advantage of native AWS services
Extend your data centre
Enterprises can rapidly, seamlessly and cost effectively extend their data centre with VMware Cloud on AWS. For companies that have geographic capacity needs (such as data sovereignty rules or the need to be closer to their end users) and do not want to invest in building out a new data centre, the solution can show great appeal. Also, for organisations with a need to handle seasonal spikes in demand or run projects that require short term bursts in data centre capacity or specific regional footprint expansion, VMware Cloud on AWS is a compelling proposition.
- Reduces upfront investment costs and delivers compelling TCO
- Accelerates speed of provisioning
- Reduces complexity by having the consistent architecture and operations on-premises and in the cloud
Leveraging native AWS resources
Utilising native AWS resources with existing VMware workloads migrated to VMware Cloud on AWS provides a best of both worlds option. With high-speed sub second access to Amazon services such as Amazon S3, Amazon Route 53 and Amazon EC2 allowing for existing back end applications to continue to run on VMware Cloud reducing costly refactoring. Front end resources can be migrated to native AWS allowing businesses to utilize the best AWS has to offer.
- Reduce TCO
- Utilise the full array of AWS cloud services
- Infrastructure-as-a-code approach
Deliver Disaster Recovery as a Service
Disaster recovery (DR), delivered as a service for VMware Cloud on AWS, delivers on-demand site protection with native automated orchestration, failover and failback capabilities. This enables organisations to implement a DR solution for the first time, reduce their secondary DR site costs by moving DR operations to the cloud, or complement their existing DR by protecting additional workloads with a cloud-based DR solution for specific applications.
- Reduces secondary DR site costs
- Accelerates time-to-protection
- Increases business resiliency
- Simplifies DR operations
Next generation apps
Modernise existing apps with AWS capabilities and services, and integrate modern app tools and frameworks to develop next generation apps while utilising existing VMware infrastructure.
- Fast and seamless path to new modernised apps
- Extend the value of existing on-premises app investment
Why Xtravirt?
De-risk your cloud strategy and accelerate transformation with Xtravirt
- Validate your cloud strategy
- Determine your cloud readiness
- Assure a successful migration
- Solve your business challenges
For many organisations, migrating to cloud is largely a journey into the unknown. If you are venturing on this journey for the first time, you don’t want the unforeseen to knock you off-course or end up at the wrong destination. It pays to have a trusted partner to help you navigate through the complexity, optimise your investment in cloud and advise you on the best path to choose. That way, cloud really is within reach.
At Xtravirt, we understand that no two organisations are the same; different hardware, software and applications combine to create unique and complex IT environments. We have the expertise and proven consulting methodologies to ensure each of our customers adopt the right cloud strategy and achieve their intended business outcomes.
Xtravirt can help you design, deploy and optimise your cloud strategy, as well as support you as you move forward with our new Xtravirt Managed Services (XMS) packages. We can also help optimise your journey to VMware Cloud on AWS with our accelerator services, designed to help you reach your goals faster. To find out more about how Xtravirt can help you on your journey to VMware Cloud on AWS visit xtravirt.com/vmc-aws.
Xtravirt’s Official VMware Competencies and Achievements
