Introduction

Business models are continually evolving as new technologies, tools, and ways of working emerge across industries. This major technological and legislative transformation is compelling enterprises to develop business strategies that reduce time to market, strengthen regulatory compliance, and embed cloud security. Thus, enterprises are constantly looking for effective ways to scale digitally, embracing flexible approaches with agile methodologies. Customers desire for a tight integration between on-premises and cloud services for their applications, as the applications use the same APIs irrespective of where they are running in a hybrid cloud. This blended approach of hybrid cloud solutions has encouraged enterprise customers to adopt solutions such as VMWare Cloud on AWS services. This integrated cloud solution allows businesses to run their application workloads across VMware-based hybrid cloud infrastructure, extending optimized access to the comprehensive native AWS services while addressing data and cloud security, compliance, and other challenges.

This blog will take you through the offering VMC on AWS services and how HCLTech has conceptualized it to extend maximum benefits to its customers, leveraging its hybrid cloud service experience and capabilities in reaping the business value, overcoming the barriers, and maximizing the opportunities in the market to accelerate the transformation journey seamlessly.

Why VMC on AWS:

Over the last decade, cloud adoption has become an integral part of the long-term vision for organizations. As per a recent study conducted by an esteemed market research firm, 88% of organizations are adopting a hybrid IT approach, and 89% acknowledge that cloud adoption includes a dedicated hybrid cloud strategy. VMC on AWS offers a plethora of compelling business benefits for a customer to choose from, such as:

• Gaining a comprehensive view of the applications to choose the right mix of prototypes for multi-purpose workloads
• Since VMWare cloud was seen as the most commonly used and an equally versatile product in an SDDC framework, the leading IT service and cloud providers are well equipped with a large certified talent pool of VMWare cloud SDDC experts proficient in designing and extracting the best potential from solutions, around VMware stack in a private cloud setting
• Global infrastructure scaling across multiple locations provides resiliency and feasibility of utilizing the public cloud services to existing brownfield deployments to bring more opportunities
• Consumption of services with the pay-as-you-go model 

Furthermore the alliance between two major industry players i.e. VMware and AWS paved the way for this offering which will be a major cause of flux for its adoption. VMware being one of the leading providers of virtualization technology and AWS being one of the major public cloud providers have collaborated and engineered the offering VMC on AWS to provide an extensive range of platform and infrastructure options to help enterprises. Digital transformation journey involves complex tasks beginning from re-architecting applications to re-skilling the staff, and managing interoperability issues in environments. VMWare cloud on AWS enables customers to optimize costs by providing a unified environment to migrate, extend, and manage on-premises vSphere-based environments on to the public cloud seamlessly and rapidly, leveraging the existing investments on skillsets and expertise of familiar VMware tools and virtualization technology.

VMC on AWS at a Glance:

This entrenched offering is a potential accelerator embracing business resilience, agility, and cost-efficiency so that its customers can harness the power of a truly compelling integrated hybrid cloud model with enterprise-grade capabilities.

VMC on AWS across AWS regions provides a robust cloud infrastructure to enable significant use-cases over time

VMC on AWS across AWS regions provides a robust cloud infrastructure to enable significant use-cases over time. Following are some of the prominent usage scenarios:

• DC exit strategy: Migrate and modernize
• DRaaS: Robust disaster protection 
• Consolidate smaller DCs to cloud
• Migrate without application/IP changes 
• Modernize applications using native AWS services 
• Burst capacity 
• Workload migration using cold, vMotion, and bulk migration methodologies

Strategies to Economize with VMC on AWS:

• Gaining edge from discounts and reservations: Making excellent use of pricing discounts is much easier when virtual machines, running for more than 50% of the time with predictable workload, can be identified for a three-year subscription model. This offering facilitates convenient commercial constructs with a variety of on-demand pricing or committing to a subscription over one year or three year paid up front with respective discounts.
• Intelligent automation to enforce cloud governance policies: Keeping cloud governance in focus, applying rules that maximize visibility, maintain control, and ensures budgetary compliance are crucial to maintain control over the environment. Policy-driven automation is worth considering for automating IT and operational processes to save time and effort.
• Accountability with chargeback and show back: An efficient system of chargeback via tagging strategy will facilitate measurability and predictability which in turn drives accountability in terms of cost and performance. Budget forecasting and accurate reporting can be developed by finance departments from an over-all spending standpoint and improve the performance of business holistically with better utilization of resources.

Depicted below are some of the techno-functional benefits:

• Lean operations
• Complex refactoring, or re-architecting of application can be avoided
• Bi-directional application migration without downtime using VMC on AWS and HCX 
• Fully featured advanced networking and cloud security services
• On-demand host capacity and flexible consumption
• Reduced labor hours of operations with a reduction in data center operating costs

HCLTech as a catalyst fostering innovation 

HCLTech brings core capabilities for VMC on AWS implementation with an ecosystem of partners, standardized, and validated blueprints. The IT service provider plays a pivotal role in simplifying the transformation journey to VMC on AWS with its key competencies varying from consulting approach, modernization practices, and operational excellence.

• Extensive collaboration and strategic partnership with both VMware and AWS works as a key driver in accelerating innovation. The strengthened alliance of HCLTech being the early adopter of VVD (VMware validated design), VCF, NSX-T, vRealize Suite, and HCLTech’s, Premier consulting Partnership with AWS help enterprises to realize the tangible value of VMC on AWS and embark hybrid cloud journey seamlessly. 
• Customers can leverage HCLTech’s VelocITy i.e a holistic framework encompassing end-to- end service delivery of hybrid cloud solutions catering comprehensive assessment of hybrid cloud maturity and adoption roadmap for customers.
• HCLTech is honored with VMware’s Hybrid Cloud SISO Partner Award, as one of the best industry players. HCLTech is VVD 4.x certified and the engineering talent comprises of experts, certified and trained professionals on AWS and VMware technologies. The CoE has a dedicated team of R&D engineers and their focus is to develop innovative technology solutions, especially in virtualization technology, aligned with business goals. HCLTech has done huge investments in Innovation Garage and has extensively tested and validated VMC on AWS use cases for demonstration and enlighten customers with interesting scenarios.

To conclude, a hybrid cloud solutions approach and cloud strategy are the way forward to respond to dynamic business needs, and VMC on AWS is the perfect offering to fuse both the worlds of on-premises and public cloud. To realize its true value, it is vital to work with a cloud provider who has a proven track record in tiding over the wave of such disruptions in the cloud journey. Leverage the expertise with HCLTech, ranging from strategy and assessment, modernization and migration techniques, and cloud management services, along with a strong partner ecosystem to scale and mature digitally with best practices, to underpin the various business functions. This will help customers in achieving their cost optimization objectives, overcoming the uncertainty, and shifting the radar to a myriad of other business initiatives to derive benefits commercially.