By David Lim, APJ – Head of VMWare Cloud on AWS
Many businesses are sitting on a piggy bank full of money without realizing it. The IDC study “The Business Value of VMware Cloud (VMC) on Amazon Web Services (AWS) for Supporting Business-Critical Applications” found that companies which digitally transform by extending their on-premises VMware virtual machines to AWS, realized annual new revenue gains of USD9.6 million per business on average.
Fostering more efficiency in IT infrastructure teams, providing robust application and business support, reducing the frequency and duration of unplanned outages, and enabling more efficient use of resources contributed towards achieving these millions of dollars in annual benefits. VMC on AWS helped businesses reduce their infrastructure expenses by 40% because they could scale their compute and storage capacity more closely to their actual requirements, without the need to make additional hardware investments. Companies can now invest that bonus piggy bank money to drive innovation by creating a cloud-ready workforce at their own pace, and digitally transforming with greater agility.
Take West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District (WWP) in New Jersey, USA as an example. They’re educating students in pre-K through 12th grade and managed to reduce infrastructure costs by 75% by using AWS on VMware cloud, while supporting the technology needs of 10,000 students across ten schools. The district scaled up its VMware environments on AWS, freeing up local infrastructure to host hundreds of additional virtual desktops for students.
Create a cloud-ready workforce at your own pace
Cloud skills are vital in helping businesses prepare for a digital future, and a skilled IT team can ensure that a business is agile, and able to respond quickly to competitive changes, new regulatory requirements, or changes in customer demands. According to the recent “Unlocking APAC’s Digital Potential: Changing Digital Skill Needs and Policy Approaches” research, prepared by strategy and economics consulting firm AlphaBeta and commissioned by AWS, cloud architecture design will be one of the top five in-demand digital skills in Singapore, Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea in the next four years. Migrations to the cloud usually involve refactoring and learning a new set of skills, tools, and processes to manage applications. Organizations often create a skills gap when they migrate to the cloud, which puts them under pressure to upskill their existing workforce to use new technologies or bring in new skills through external hires while reallocating existing employees to other projects. Neither option is fast nor cost-effective to enable organizations to fully reap the benefits of what the cloud has to offer.
An efficient way for organizations to move to the cloud is to have a similar software stack on-premises and in the public cloud. This consistency is particularly beneficial for legacy workloads that are tightly coupled to the infrastructure environments. Using the same software that organizations have in their data centers, the public cloud becomes a seamless extension of on-premises data centers, allowing employees to manage both on-premises and cloud resources through a familiar interface. Using familiar tools also means IT staff don’t have to learn new skills and interfaces when expanding to the public cloud and can use their existing IT skills to achieve higher innovation levels.
One customer recently told me: “The benefit of having a similar software stack on-premises and in the public cloud is that you don’t need your people to learn another technology. Engineers already have all the knowledge required to run and maintain the systems, because they’re familiar with the existing software.” A consistent software environment during the migration process allows businesses to upskill their workforce at a sustainable pace without losing momentum on their digital transformation journey while establishing an employee culture of learning that encourages experimentation with different approaches.
Free up staff time to digitally transform with greater agility
A refocused, cloud-ready workforce can accelerate business agility and innovation. The cloud frees up employee resources and time previously spent on maintaining infrastructure, installing software, and running data centers. Employees can use that newfound time to deliver digital transformation initiatives. In the IDC study, a customer said that VMC on AWS opened up new staff opportunities to get involved in digital transformation. Instead of focusing on day-to-day operational tasks and working with customers on a transactional basis, engineers and business intelligence analysts could focus on building new architectures, modernizing data platforms, and integrating partners into their IT systems.
According to IDC, businesses that adopted VMC on AWS experienced 46% faster cloud migrations. Automating IT infrastructure operations, using easy-to-use tools for monitoring and reporting, and leveraging existing IT staff and skills helped accelerate the process. With the cloud, organizations gain access to a wide range of tools and applications to meet their business needs. Instead of creating their services from scratch, online cloud marketplaces make it easier for organizations to purchase and integrate applications with a few clicks. For example, the AWS Marketplace offers over 8,000 software listings from more than 1,600 providers to help organizations improve operational processes. Such cloud marketplaces have their certification process for applications and tools, ensuring high levels of compatibility and compliance that will make migrating and modernizing applications much easier for organizations.
IDC also found that application developers using VMC on AWS were 18% more productive. They spend less time addressing application availability issues as the cloud makes completed applications better available to users throughout the business. Developer teams can use their freed-up time to experiment with new projects which streamline operations and drive business growth.
Cash in your piggy bank to increase your pace of innovation
Organizations need to find a way to transform based on their unique needs digitally. By using an approach that leverages existing applications and moves them to the cloud, organizations have the freedom to transform at their own pace and using existing skillsets, which saves time and cost. It’s time to cash in your piggy bank to accelerate digital transformation and innovate faster than your competitors.