For many years, VMware and Amazon have been on two sides of the storage world. While VMware had asked customers to run their businesses on their own computer servers, Amazon had always encouraged companies to move it to the cloud. But now, both the companies have teamed up to integrate their views and services.

Beginning next year, VMware’s software will run on Amazon cloud, thereby giving VMware customers to use the existing tools to manage their servers, except that their servers will be located in the cloud. Alongside, users can also make use of Amazon’s database and storage tools and services.

Now, you can already run VMware’s virtual machines on Amazon’s cloud, and can even use VMware’s management tool, vCenter, to manage your virtual machines. So, what’s different with this partnership? Well, to start with both the companies have decided to create a new version of Amazon cloud that’ll allow VMware’s virtual machines to run directly on the cloud, without the need for an Amazon software in between. Also, this new partnership will give users the flexibility to run their software both on the cloud as well as on the existing data centers.

In many ways, this partnership has reiterated the fact that cloud is the present and the future, and no business can afford to ignore it. In addition, it’s also a significant milestone in the world of cloud computing, as VMware has gone from seeing Amazon as a rival, to admitting that its products are the future.

In fact, VMware made a brief foray into the cloud world with its own product called vCloud Air, but it never really took off. As a strategic move, this company has decide to focus on its core business of running virtual machines, and at the same time, is looking to expand to capabilities that’ll allow these virtual machines to run on the cloud. This way, VMware can cater to businesses that want to stay on their own data centers, and also to businesses that want to move to the cloud. This is why such a move is likely to expand the market reach and customer base of VMware, as it’s looking for ways to cope with the changing digital environment.

This partnership is significant for Amazon too, as this is an opportunity to reach out to customers who haven’t still migrated to the cloud. This would give it a better foothold among conservative businesses that still want to keep data on their local servers for reasons ranging from lack of knowledge to security concerns. In fact, this partnership with VMware can help Amazon to reach these customers before its rivals, thereby increasing its market share in a competitive market.

According to International Data Corporation (IDC), this deal will be significant in the short-term for VMware, but in the longer term though, Amazon will be a huge beneficiary as it can bring on more corporate customers under its AWS cover. The biggest winner is of course, the customers, as they can now choose to run their operations on their own VMware-equipped data centers and on Amazon Cloud.

 

The post VMware’s Software on Amazon Cloud – Surprise! appeared first on Cloud News Daily.