What’s New in VMware Cloud on AWS? The Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), cloud platform featured prominently at this week’s big VMworld conference. There was new functionality added to the managed service, and a study highlighting enterprise cost savings. The latest release of VMware Cloud is focused on the modernization and migration of workloads, according to the virtualization giant at its San Francisco conference. VMware stated in a statement that a new Cloud Migration experience is now available on VMware Cloud On AWS through the Cloud Console. Over time, other workflows will be available on VMware Cloud On AWS as well. VMware HCX powers the Cloud Migration services. This simplifies the complicated tasks of migrating to the hybrid cloud such as planning, identifying and moving workloads. The new HCX functionality was not the only thing that made this possible. VMware stated that the new VMware HCX capabilities allow push-button migration and interconnectivity among VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs in different AWS regions. The support for Elastic vSAN further improves storage scaling. Customers can integrate native AWS Services into their applications after they have been migrated. There were also AWS-related news in Disaster Recovery as-a Service (DRaaS), and data protection. VMware and Dell EMC will team up to create new solutions based upon using AWS S3 storage buckets on AWS for VMware Cloud. [Click on the image to see a larger view.] Top Use Cases for VMware Cloud On AWS (source : Faction). VMware also highlighted recent research by Faction, a managed service provider for VMware Cloud On AWS. Sean Charnock, CEO of Faction, stated that a recent research report we published showed that VMware Cloud on AWS usage could increase over the next two-years. The main drivers of VMware Cloud on AWS adoption and interest will be its scaleability, support for strategic initiatives and cost savings. This is consistent with what we’ve seen from our VMware Cloud on AWS customers, who are using our portfolio of value added services, including Hybrid Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service and cloud-attached storage.” Highlights of the survey include:

The top drivers of VMware Cloud on AWS are scalability and strategic IT initiatives, as well as cost savings.
More than half (55%) of respondents who have workloads in off-premises Private Cloud are considering VMware Cloud.
The study predicted market growth and found that both SMBs as well as large enterprises could see significant growth in the next 12-24 month, especially in the tech, financial, and education industries.
Datacenter extension, disaster recovery, and cloud migration are the most popular use cases.
The top four industries that are most interested in VMware Cloud on AWS include tech services, financial services, education and healthcare.
Nearly one-third of respondents intend to increase their workloads or start running in the next twelve months.
The top three reasons to not consider VMware Cloud on AWS are:
- For the foreseeable future, plan to keep all IT resources on-premises
- VMware Cloud on AWS: Don’t Know Enough
- You should plan to use Azure or AWS public clouds natively
The following are the top three challenges when migrating to VMware Cloud on AWS:
- Executing the actual migration
- Assessing workloads before
- Inadequacy of VMware Cloud on AWS and lack of migration expertise
The top three challenges facing VMware Cloud on AWS are:
- Cost management
- Complexity of the network
- AWS prerequisites
The following are the top objections to choosing VMware Cloud on AWS:
- Too expensive (46 percent)
- Directly moved to public cloud (AWS Azure, GCP, GCP, etc.) (24 percent).
- Perceived lack in cost-effective, external