VMware Cloud On AWS Is Promising, But No Cigar

Yet. There is no shortage of hype surrounding the launch of VMware Cloud on AWS, a product that is destined to push more companies to the public cloud, those that have their setups virtualized.

This was quite a secret affair, prior to the blockbuster launch late last month, with VMware and AWS officials only dropping a few precious hints here and there about the service.

Now, though everyone is talking about the availability of VMware Cloud on the Amazon Web Services platform. But the early verdict is that the service is far from a finished product, and more needs to be done to connect the two environments.

Understandable.

The potential with VMware Cloud on AWS is plain visible, as it can serve as a bridge to the public cloud, at a time of immense growth in the industry. And it comes at a time when enterprises are rapidly moving away from virtualized workloads, onto the cloud.

However, the biggest benefits of the service are not yet here — and may take a while to arrive.

Its promise will only be fulfilled when developers can more easily access the native tools that are available on the AWS platform. Then there are the considerations of network management and security costs across multiple environments.

And that’s not even talking about overall cost management and governance.

Through it all, one thing is evident — an impressive amount of joint engineering went into the service, and engineers at both companies have done well in what is still an early release of a solution that has the potential to disrupt proceedings.

Yes, there are concerns, as there always are in matters like these.

Concerns about how tightly integrated are VMware environments with those native Amazon cloud services, because even though VMware Cloud on AWS is billed as bare metal, the environments actually sit on instances. And how exactly will NSX be incorporated into the AWS control plane.

But the fact remains that 40% of VMware customers still are not using the public cloud, according to the company’s internal user survey. And it is these users that will find the most benefit from this offering.

The base is here, now it’s time to build upon it.