Two years ago, VMware Inc. and Amazon Web Services Inc. joined forces to offer the VMware Cloud on AWS. The idea was to link VMware customers to the AWS public cloud, offering businesses a simple, safe and speedy path to hybrid cloud and operations modernization.

As the popularity of the hybrid-cloud operating model has increased, so has the demand for VMware Cloud on AWS. And the partnership now appears stronger than ever. As customers look to avoid the headaches and hassles of migrating workloads into the cloud, VMware and AWS are there to help, according to Mark Lohmeyer (pictured, right), senior vice president and general manager of the Cloud Platform Business Unit at VMware Inc.

“What’s been great to see over the last two years is really the customer momentum, and the use cases and the way they’re able to take advantage of that service to really solve some really big challenges for their business,” Lohmeyer said.

Lohmeyer and VMware Cloud on AWS customer Ben Tanner (pictured, left), director of cloud enablement at IHS Markit Ltd., spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas. They discussed the success of VMware Cloud on AWS and how IHS is using the service for its cloud-migration process. (* Disclosure below.)

Bridging the gap from on-premises to cloud

IHS Markit is an information company that provides digital access to engineering specifications, standards, and other technical documentation. “Data is king to us, so it’s real hard for us to be part-in on the cloud,” Tanner said.

Rather than “a big bang,” Tanner chose a low-risk, incremental move for IHS. This meant “getting the data to the cloud and enabling the developers to work in a way that’s going to deliver business value quicker to our customers,” he said. “VMware Cloud [on AWS] helps bridge that gap for us.”

The ability to move into the public cloud with little disruption to current operations is a big benefit of VMware Cloud on AWS, according to Tanner. He described the method as “lift and shift and fix” rather than just lift and shift.

“It allows you to get into that public cloud space without having to drastically change how IT operates,” he said. “And then you can start to shift to more of a public cloud focus.”

But while the disruption of internal transformation can be minimized. It has to occur. “[We’re] starting to run IT more like a product management organization and actively listening and soliciting feedback and really delivering what [the developers] need,” Tanner said.

Echoing Tanner’s statement that “My job is to make life easy for my developers,” Lohmeyer said: “We want to make life as easy as possible for Ben and IT so he can make it easy for developers.”

A single environment for VMware and AWS tools and services

In the VMware environment, customers have access to VMware tools for both existing workloads and modernized containerized applications, Lohmeyer stated.

“Then, we also allow their IT teams and their development teams to have access to all the native AWS services and … data tools that they might want to leverage from AWS,” he said. “All in a single environment.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS re:Invent event. (* Disclosure: VMware Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither VMware nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE