Maximize your cost savings with VMware Cloud on AWS
nellmarie.colman
Fri, 04/16/2021 - 11:23
According to 451 Research, over 90% of businesses are running workloads in the cloud. Yet all of the surveyed businesses continue to also use on-premises private cloud. This trend toward hybrid cloud which leverages both public and private clouds continues to gain momentum, with over half of businesses currently using or planning to use a fully integrated hybrid cloud environment.
But making the shift to hybrid cloud is tough. Operational workflows that were built around your legacy systems will need to change. And your team may not have the skill sets necessary to start running workloads in the cloud or even the time to manage multiple cloud platforms.
Rackspace Managed VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS addresses this gap by migrating your on-premises workloads to a VMware SDDC stack, running on top of dedicated hosts within an AWS data center all managed by our VMware and AWS experts. This simplifies your path to a managed hybrid cloud, while enabling you to use existing VMware management tools. Plus, your applications gain native access to the broad portfolio of AWS cloud services.
For many organizations, VMC on AWS, combined with managed services from Rackspace Technology, can also deliver an unprecedentedly lower total cost of ownership (TCO) compared to keeping your workloads on-premises. This article takes a closer look at how Rackspace Managed VMC on AWS can help you optimize your TCO.
Maximizing business value from VMware Cloud on AWS
According to a 2020 IDC study, The Business Value of Running Applications on VMware Cloud on AWS in VMware Hybrid Cloud Environments, organizations running applications on VMC for AWS completed migrations faster, with less risk and at a much lower cost:
57% lower overall cost to migrate equivalent
59% less staff time
46% faster to migrate
Compared with running the same workloads in a traditional on-premises environment, participants reported that they can better support their businesses on VMC for AWS, while achieving a 351% three-year ROI. The study linked these cost benefits to four key areas: performance, agility, business impact and infrastructure. Lets take a look at each of these and how organizations could gain even greater TCO than reported in the study.
Improved performance and reliability
Companies reported that the switch to VMC on AWS resulted in a more resilient and agile infrastructure, with an 83% reduction in frequency and duration of unplanned outages. This minimizes the costs related to lost productivity and revenue.
Participants also reported improvements in application performance and risk-related metrics, creating a better experience for users.
Our users are seeing higher performance with VMC on AWS, and theyre getting more information delivered at the speed that they need. Because were operating a medical facility, we need speed, performance, and security, especially when moving data from one location to another. Our users are 10% more productive on average as a result. IDC Study Participant
Youre likely to see even greater improvements in productivity and reduced risk when using Rackspace Managed VMC on AWS with our optional Guest OS Services. Not only do our experts handle the management of your VMC on AWS environment, but they can also handle the day-to-day management of your virtualized operating system. From monitoring, patching, configuration and optimization to antivirus licensing and updates, our experts can maintain and support your guest operating systems 24x7x365. Furthermore, Rackspace Managed VMC on AWS can be used as a low-cost disaster recovery site for your on-premises VMware workloads.
Improved agility
With VMC on AWS, participants reported being able to deploy new VMs 66% faster, leading to a 14% higher productivity for application development teams. Theyre able to move and increase their footprint on workloads out into AWS as needed moving entire workloads to VMC on AWS or just adding on additional VMs.
We are absolutely more agile with VMC on AWS. We can stand up as many machines as we want, and theres no limit or direct costs in doing this. IDC Study Participant
Rackspace Technology expertise can elevate that agility even more. From implementing auto-scaling for peak times, to integration with virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) that allows customers to scale work-from-home environments to thousands of employees, our VMware experts have helped customers around the global leverage key features of VMC on AWS.
Business impact
VMC on AWS requires less staff time to manage, secure and support infrastructure environments, which frees up IT teams to work on other initiatives and support business growth. For IT infrastructure teams, the staff time required to manage infrastructure was reduced by 48%; security teams and help desk teams achieved efficiencies of 26% and 69%, on average, respectively.
Also, with fewer unplanned downtimes, respondents reported being able to bill more hours with less downtime.
One hour less of downtime can mean millions of dollars for [our company]. IDC Study Participant
With Rackspace Managed VMC on AWS, your IT teams are able to focus even more time on initiatives that are core to your business rather than managing the service. We provide consolidated billing and flexible payment options, a single source for 24x7x365 support with dedicated account teams, and access to proactive monitoring and troubleshooting across multiple clouds, eliminating the need to manage AWS and VMware Cloud on AWS accounts directly.
More efficient and cost-effective infrastructure
Respondents reported that, by moving their workloads from on-premises environments to VMC on AWS, theyre able to run equivalent workloads at an average 44% lower cost over three years. This is related to both infrastructure-related savings and staff time efficiencies.
Before using VMware Cloud on AWS, we had 300 servers, but weve been able to reduce that number by 25% Also, were avoiding having to refresh another 10% of those servers, so 35% of servers in total Were avoiding $1.5 million of server hardware refreshes. IDC Study Participant
In some cases, these cost savings could be even greater if VMC on AWS didnt require the purchase of additional hosts just to increase the amount of storage. Rackspace Technology has solved this problem for our customers by jointly developing with NetApp the only globally available externally attached storage that connects natively to AWS as a data store. Rackspace Cloud Volume Service allows customers to add storage without having to purchase additional hosts. For storage-heavy workloads or those leveraging VMC on AWS as a disaster recovery (DR) solution, this could result in up to 40% or more in savings.
The experts at Rackspace Technology are here to help
While the TCO of VMC on AWS is clearly defined in the IDC Study, they do call out that due to the accelerated commitment to move to the cloud post-pandemic organizations will require guidance. They will need assistance implementing and demonstrating their modernization and transformation initiatives and identifying optimal ways to unlock value from this easy-to-use hybrid cloud experienc