Amazon Targets VMware with AWS vCenter Management Portal
A new management portal from Amazon Web Services is clearly targeted at VMware in the continuous race for dominance in the cloud. Despite being on top of the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market, Amazon doesn't seem comfortable enough to rest on its laurels.
A new management portal from Amazon Web Services (AWS) is clearly targeted at VMware (VMW) in the continuous race for dominance in the cloud. Despite being on top of the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market, Amazon doesn’t seem comfortable enough to rest on its laurels. This latest announcement, which offers a management portal for vCenter on AWS, is meant to turn VMware users away from the virtualization company’s cloud offerings and to Amazon Web Services.
Jeff Barr, chief evangelist for Amazon Web Services, wrote in a blog post that large organizations’ IT administrators and managers are looking for fast and easy self-provisioning, cost savings and the ability to switch costs from capex to opex. But Barr noted that they often don’t have time to learn a new set of tools and concepts.
Many are already familiar with VMware vCenter … which brings us to the recent Amazon news. “In order to make AWS more accessible to this very important audience,” Barr wrote, the company has launched AWS Management Portal for vCenter.
“If you are already using VMware vCenter to manage your virtualized environment, you will be comfortable in this new environment right away, even if you are new to AWS, starting with the integrated sign-on process, which is integrated with your existing Active Directory,” Barr noted.
Additionally, IT admins can also import existing “golden” VMware images into EC2 through the portal using the VM Import feature.
In the virtualization space, VMware is pretty much universal, so trying to entice VMware vCenter customers to give Amazon Web Services offerings a try is a good move by the public cloud giant. Not only is Amazon offering vCenter management capabilities from its own cloud, but it’s also offering what it suggests is an easy way to migrate workloads from VMware directly into EC2.
As competitors erode the massive Amazon IaaS market share, the frontrunner needs to look for ways to add value and keep itself in the leading position. This is just one example of how Amazon is trying to stay on top.
