AWS bends to Broadcom's will with VMware Cloud Foundation as-a-service
Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM are all doing it. Andy Jassy's rent-a-server shop may have felt it was leaving money on the table
Amazon Web Services has introduced a VMware-as-a-service offering that conforms to Broadcom's licensing schemes.
The forthcoming Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS) will offer the chance to run Broadcom's flagship VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud stack in the Amazonian cloud.
Amazon promises it will be possible to "set up a complete VCF environment in just a few hours" and then "extend on-premises networks and migrate workloads without having to change IP addresses, retrain staff, or re-write operational runbooks."
VCF includes compute, storage, and network virtualization tools, plus management and automation products. Broadcom pitches the suite as a "private cloud" rather than a "hybrid cloud" – but it's a fine distinction. For Broadcom a private cloud can use resources in a public cloud provided they are dedicated hosts, whereas a hybrid cloud sees users rent compute resources that could be running multiple workloads for different cloud clients.
AWS's brief post describing the service doesn't mention dedicated hosts.
It does state that EVS delivers the same experience as any other VCF implementation – including the ability to use third party backup, disaster recovery, and storage.
Broadcom has gone all in on VCF, which it insists pays for itself even after it changed pricing strategy to offer the suite under per-core subscriptions bundled with support – an arrangement that nearly always means big cost increases for VMware customers who hold perpetual licenses.
AWS was VMware's first love in the cloud. The pre-acquisition virtualization pioneer and the cloud colossus jointly engineered a service called VMware Cloud on AWS, which Virtzilla managed and AWS hosted – and could resell if it chose.
That offering did not use VCF, and after acquiring VMware Broadcom stopped offering the combo of products that powered it. Broadcom then cut AWS out of the loop by forbidding it reselling the service. AWS seemingly retaliated by suggesting VMware Cloud on AWS users migrate away from VMware.
Meanwhile, Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM all started offering cloud services based on VCF. Numerous small clouds do likewise.
- Public clouds are 'dirty' about VMware's on-prem push, says Broadcom CEO Hock Tan
- A year after Broadcom took control of VMware, it's in the box seat
- Veeam tests support for another VMware alternative: XCP-NG
- VMware by Broadcom lifts storage allowances and prices for vSphere Foundation
The Register understands AWS came to realize that VMware Cloud on AWS was not a long-term proposition, and that it therefore needed to offer a VMware service that conformed with Broadcom's new licensing and bundling schemes. Several months of work went into creating that service, which became Amazon EVS as announced on Monday.
The service therefore represents a win for Broadcom – which successfully wooed the leading cloud platform.
But not completely: AWS's announcement post points out that users of the new service "can easily enhance these workloads using other native AWS capabilities and explore modernizing over time."
That's a nod to the fact that modern apps aren't built on VMs, and that VMware's Tanzu Kubernetes platform is yet to become a developer favorite despite years of strategy shifts. ®