(bright music) >> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE, with digital coverage of AWS re:Invent 2020. Special coverage sponsored by AWS Global Partner Network. >> Okay, welcome back everyone to theCUBE Virtual Experience here for re:Invent coverage 2020 virtual. Normally we're in person doing interviews face to face, but we're remote this year because of the pandemic. We're here for the APN partner experience, kickoff coverage with two great guests, Rima Olinger, of global lead for VMware cloud on AWS. And Aarthi Raju, Senior Manager Solutions Architecture for Amazon Web Services. Thanks for coming on, appreciate it. >> Good to be with you John, thank you. >> So I got, want to get it out there this partner network experience, it's really about the ecosystem. And VMware has been one of the biggest success stories. They've been around for a long time, and not one of the earliest ecosystem partners, but a big success. 2016, when that announcement happened, a lot of people were like, whoa, we VMware is giving into Amazon. And Amazon was like, no, that's not how it works. So turns out everyone was been proven wrong, it's been hugely successful beneficial to both. What's the momentum, share an update this year on the AWS VMware momentum. >> So John, as you know, we're into our third anniversary, and the relationship cannot be any stronger. We see customers are leaning into the service very heavily. We see great adoption across multiple industries. As some data points for you, if we look at October of this year to October prior year, we're seeing the number of active nodes, or the number of consuming host and active VMS, nearly doubled year over year. we also continue to see greater partner interest in the solution, we have over 300 ISVs that have validated the services on VMC. And we see over 600 plus partners that continue to take the competencies and build practices around it. So the momentum is very strong, for years still today. >> One of the comments I made when the naysayers were like kind of pooh-poohing the deal, I was like, no, no, the cloud growth is going to be a factor at that time, then, the trendy thing was software's eating the world, was a big trend there. If you look at the growth of cloud scale, and software innovation, and the operating side of it, 'cause VMware runs IT, they let operators running IT. There's no conflict because Amazon's growing and now the operator roles growing and changing. So you have two dynamics going on. I think this is a really nuanced point for the VMware, AWS relationship around, how they both fit together. Because it's a win win better together scenario, and it is on AWS, which is a distinction. Can you guys share your reaction to kind of that dynamic of operating software at scale, and how this translates for customers? >> Absolutely, we see a lot of benefits that this service is bringing to the customers. Because what it's doing is providing them with this consistent infrastructure and operations across hybrid cloud environments. And in this way, they have the choice of where to place their applications on-prem or in the cloud, specifically. And this is one of the reasons why AWS is a VMware's preferred cloud provider for all vSphere workloads. We see the customers gravitate towards it and be receptive to it specifically because they say I accelerate my path towards migrating and modernizing my application. It provides me with consistent as I mentioned, operations and infrastructure. And it also helps them with factoring, and helps us scale their business and very fast, very seamless fashion. Aarthi what is your perspective, maybe additional things. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, from a technical innovation perspective, the momentum, John has been very strong, especially, listening to what customers have been asking us the past couple of years. 2020 has been a big year for us in terms of launching some giant innovations. A couple of things to call out is, we launched the VMware Transit Connect. This was announced during VMworld this year and customers have been telling us, hey, we are migrating workloads from on premises to the cloud, we need a simplified way of connecting all these resources on-prem resources, resources on VMware cloud on AWS, and their AWS native resources as well. So, the VMware Transit Connect, uses the AWS transit gateway that we launched at re:Invent two years back to provide that simplified connectivity model for our customers. The next big thing this year was, we introduced a new instance type i3en.metal, So customers have been telling us they want denser nodes for especially storage heavy workload. So we launched this i3en, that comes with approximately, like 45 terabytes of storage per node. So that's a lot of storage for individual nodes. So customers have been taking advantage of these dense nodes as well. There was other areas that we kind of focused on from a lower entry point for our customers. When we initially started the service, John, you know that we had, the minimum entry point as four nodes, we've scaled that down to three, and now we've come to two nodes, giving the same production SLA for customers. The other big launch this year was the acquisition of Datrium by VMware and how we introduce the VMware cloud disaster recovery. Datrium uses the eight native AWS services like S3 and EC2, providing customers this low cost TR options. We're talking about the APN here and for partners, we launched the VMware cloud Director Service, which delivers multi-tenancy to our managed service providers, so that they can cater to small, to medium sized enterprises. >> What are some of the other use cases that are the key in these migrations, because this becomes a big benefit we're hearing, certainly, during the partner day, here at re:Invent, is, migration, cloud SaaSification, getting to a SaaS, but not losing the business model. Either was on premises or born in the cloud, this done new operating models, the key thing, what are some of the key use cases for partners? >> The most widely adopted use case that John, which you rightfully touched on, is really the cloud migration. We see around 41% of customers use the service just for cloud migrations. Now, this could be an application migration, like SAP, SQL server or Oracle Applications, or it could be a complete data center evacuation. And we see that with some customers who have a cloud mandate, or they have refresh cycles that are coming up, or maybe they're in a colo, and they're not happy with their SLA. I could use the example of William Hill, is one of the customers largest betting and gaming companies that are in the UK. And what's the use case was, a combination of a data center extension as well as a capacity expansion specifically. And what William Hill was able to do is, move 800 on-premise servers, and they decommission them in the first 12 months. And they also migrated 3000 VM. So that is cloud migrations is a big use case. The second big use case, as I mentioned earlier, is the data center extension that includes also VDI, the combination of both is around 42% of the use cases, with around 26%, I would say for data center extension and 16% for VDI. Why, customers want to expand their footprint, they want to go to a new region, and they want to meet on demand, cyclical capacity needs, or sometimes temporary needs for some events or some seasonal spikes. So we see that as a second big use case. A third one equally important, tend to be disaster recovery. Now, this is either to augment an existing DR. Replace a DR that is already in place, or start a new DR, and that constitutes around 17% of the use cases that we see. Because customers want to reduce their DR, avert some cost by moving to the cloud. And one example that comes to mind is Pennsylvania Lumbers Men's Mutual Insurance, it was a DR use Case. They worked with an external storage partner of ours faction in order to put that in place. So overall a great use cases across the board. And I know a big one is application modernization, Aarthi, I know you work with your teams on that, if there's any feedback from you on that. >> Yeah, the next generation applications or application modernization comes a lot. We talk to like AWS customers who are migrating from on-premises to the cloud using VMware cloud on AWS. And three or four years back as we were building the service and architecting, one thing was very evident, like we wanted to make sure that as we were building the service, we wanted to ensure that customers can take advantage of the native AWS services. We've got 175 plus services and new services launching at re:Invent, So we wanted to make sure that there is this, seamless mechanism and seamless path for customers to modernize using native AWS services. So what we've done as part of like onboarding for customers and as customers built on VMware cloud on AWS, is provide them both the network path and data path. So they can as your into the same availability zone or region, they're like, hey, I can use S3 for backups. I can use EFS, for file shares, etcetera. So we're seeing a wide range of next generation application use cases that customers are building on. >> Why would I get at the reasons why customers are continuing to adopt VMware cloud on AWS? Can you guys share an update, I'll show you the obvious reasons, the beginning was nice strategy for VMware, it's proven to be clear. But where's the innovation coming from? What's the key drivers for the adoption of VMware cloud on AWS? >> So one of the key patterns that we are seeing is, customers who used to be risk averse, customers will be invested a lot in VMware. And at the point, they did not want to move their workloads or applications to the cloud because of the risk involved, or sometimes they didn't want to refactor, or they were worried about the investment in tools, resources, they tend to gravitate towards this solution. The fact that you could provide your customers with this consistent infrastructure and operations across on premise, as well as on the cloud environment. The fact that you do not need to do an application refactoring. You could optimize your workload placement, based on your business needs, you could move your workloads bidirectionally, you could either leave it on-prem, or move it to the cloud, and vice versa. We've also noticed that there is a lower TCO associated with the use of the service. We know from a study that VMware commissioned Forrester in 2019, for that study, that 59%, there is a recurring savings in terms of infrastructure, and operational savings that is related to that. Customers tell us that, this consistency in infrastructure is translating it, into zero refactoring. This consistency in operations, is leading them to use their existing skill sets. And with the ability to relocate the workload skill into the environment that best suits them, that is providing customers with maximum flexibility. So I would say it is delivering on the promise of accelerating the migration and the modernization of our customers applications so that they can continue to respond to their business needs and continue to be competitive in the marketplace. >> Aarthi I want you to weigh in and get reaction to that. Because again, I've talked publicly and also privately with Ragu, for instance, at VMware, when this was all going down. It's a joint integration, so there's a lot of things going on under the hood that are important, what are the most important things that people should pay attention to around this partnership? Could you share your opinion? >> Yeah, sure, John. So one of the most common questions that we get from customers is, hey, this is giant integration, we can take use of make use of native AWS services, but what are some of the use cases that we should be targeting, right? As we talk to customers, some of the common use cases to think about is, it also depends on the audience. Remember, admin scoring example, who might not be familiar with the AWS side of services, they can start with something simple like backing up. So S3, which is our simple storage service, we see that use case way more often with our VMware cloud on AWS customers. This also ties with that Datrium integration that I talked about with the VCD or the VMware cloud disaster recovery, providing that low cost TR option. We are also starting to see customers offload database management, for example, with Amazon RDS, and taking advantage of the manage database service. As we talk to more customers, some of the use cases that comes up are like, hey, how do I build this data lake architecture? I've migrated to the cloud, I want to make use of the data that I have in the cloud now, how do I build my data lake architecture or perform analytics or build this operation resiliency across both these environments, their VMware cloud on AWS, as well as their native AWS environments? So we've got that seamless connectivity that they can take advantage of with VMware Transit Connect, we've got the cross account ENI model that we built, that they can take advantage of. And he talks about this one, and talks about the security is always job zero for us. And we're also seeing customers that take advantage of the AWS services like the web application firewall or shield, and integrating it with the VMware cloud on AWS environment. And that provides a seamless access right? You now have all these security services that AWS provides, that allows you to build a secure environment on VMware cloud on AWS. So providing customers the choice has always been a priority, right? We're talking about like infrastructure level services. As we move up the stack, and as customers are going through this modernization journey, like VMware provides containerization option using VMware Tanzu, that came out at VMworld. And then they also have the native options, we provide a EKS, which is our Kubernetes as a managed service. And then we also have other services that enables customers to take that jump into that modernization journey. One customer we've been working very recently with is PennyMac. They migrated their VDI infrastructure into VMware cloud on AWS. And that's allowed them to scale their environment for the remote workers. But what they are doing as part of their modernization journey, is now we're helping them build this completely serverless architecture, using Lambda on the AWS cloud. >> Yeah, that's really where they see that, the value is high level services, the old expression prima, they use the hockey from Wayne Gretzky skate to where the puck is going to be, or, get to where the ball will be in the field. This is kind of what's happening, and I'm kind of smiling, when Aarthi was talking because, I've been saying it's been, going to, IT operations, and IT serviceman's is going to change radically so years ago. But you're really talking about here is the operating side of IT coming together with cloud. VMware, I think is a leading indicator of, you still got to operate IT, you still got to operate stuff. Software needs to be operated apps need to be operated. So this new operating model is being shown here with cloud, this is the theme with and without IT. With automation, this is the big trend from re:Invent this year. Obviously AI machine learning, you still got to operate the stuff. It's IT, depends on, we got lammed in automation doesn't go away, the game is still the same, isn't it what's happening here? >> Absolutely, so what we're saying is, once there's that you're absolutely right about the fact that they needed to, worry about the operations, once they migrate their workloads, they're taking their data, they're saying, how do I make sure that I put in place operational excellence, and this is where, AWS comes in, and we provide them with the tools needed to do that. And then step number two, say, what can I do with this data? How do I translate it into a business benefit? And this is where the AI ML tools come in place, and so forth. And then the third step, which is all right, what can I do to modernize these applications further. So you're spot on, John, in saying that this is like a transformation, it is no longer a discussion about, migration anymore, it is more of a discussion about modernizing what you have in place. And this is, again, where this brilliancy between the collaboration, between VMware and AWS, is bringing to the table, sets of tools and framework for customers, whether it's security framework or networking framework, to make the pieces fit together. So I'm very excited about this partnership. And we continue to innovate, as you heard in prior discussions with our executives on behalf of our customers, we spoke about the RDS Amazon, relational database service on vSphere. We spoke about how to post on VMware cloud on AWS, to bring the cloud to the customers data center for specific needs that they have in spite. And we're not stopping here. We are continuing not to make more joint engineering and more announcements, hopefully in the future to come. >> That's great insight. And a lot of people who were commenting, three, four years ago, when this is all going down, they're on the wrong side of history, that the data is undeniable, refutable, it's a success. Aarthi give us the final word, modern applications, modern infrastructure, what does that mean, these days? What's the bottom line when you talk to people out there? When you're at a party or friends or on zoom, or a Jime, in conference? What do you tell people when they say, what's a modern application infrastructure look like? >> Yes, the word modern application, the good or bad thing is it's going to, what I said yesterday could be different from what I'm saying today. But in general, I think modern application is where we enable our customers to focus more on their business priorities using our services, versus worrying about the infrastructure or worrying about like, hey, should I be worrying about capacity? Should I be worrying about my operational needs or monitoring? I think we want to abstract all that. We want to take that heavy lifting off of customers and help them focus on their business. >> Horizontally scalable and leveraging software in the application, can't go wrong with that formula in the cloud. Thanks for coming on, and thanks for the awesome conversation. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you John. >> Thank you >> Okay, it's theCUBE Virtual for re:Invent Experience 2020, this is virtual, not in person this year. I'm John Furrier, your host from the theCUBE, thanks for watching. (bright music)