Google LLC’s cloud business and VMware Inc. today announced that they’re expanding their partnership to help enterprises more easily move on-premises applications to the cloud. 

At the center of the expanded partnership is Google Cloud’s VMware Engine service. The search giant said it’s adding the service to VMware’s VMware Cloud Universal subscription offering.

Google Cloud’s VMware Engine service rolled out in May 2020. It simplifies the task of migrating on-premises VMware workloads to Google Cloud. VMware Engine can migrate some workloads in under an hour, the company says, and customers don’t have to make any changes to the code of the applications being moved.

Google Cloud is now adding the service to VMware’s VMware Cloud Universal subscription offering, which debuted last March. The subscription offering enables companies to purchase the virtualization giant’s core software products more conveniently than they could before.

Last March, VMware announced a significant update to its software portfolio. The update affected two product suites: Tanzu, the company’s lineup of tools for managing Kubernetes clusters, and VMware Cloud Foundation, a collection of solutions designed to ease the management of cloud infrastructure. VMware made the two product bundles available as part of a single, integrated bundle called VMware Cloud.

VMware Cloud Universal, the offering highlighted today in the company’s announcement of its expanded partnership with Google, makes it possible to buy solutions from the VMware Cloud product bundle through a subscription. The offering also includes other features. Customers have access to extensive support services, as well as certain financial incentives designed to ease the task of switching from on-premises VMware software deployments to the cloud. 

The move to combine Google’s VMware Engine service for migrating on-premises workloads with the VMware Cloud Universal subscription offering is designed to simplify the customer experience. It will become easier for companies that buy the subscription offering to deploy Google’s VMware Engine.

“Our partnership with VMware makes it very easy for businesses to migrate VMware-based applications to Google Cloud’s trusted and highly performant infrastructure,” said Kevin Ichhpurani, corporate vice president for global ecosystem at Google Cloud. “This announcement brings VMware and Google Cloud closer together and represents a significant step forward in our joint commitment to support businesses’ digital transformations with Google Cloud VMware Engine.”

For Google, another reason that the partnership represents a notable milestone is the market reach of VMware’s products. Tanzu and VMware Cloud Foundation, the two product bundles to which the VMware Cloud Universal subscription offering provides access, are used by a sizable portion of the world’s largest enterprises.

Last April, VMware stated that more than 300,000 organizations and 5 million developers use Tanzu alone. As for VMware Cloud Foundation, it powers more than 85 million customer workloads. By making it easier for VMware users to access its VMware Engine service, Google can accelerate its customer acquisition efforts.

VMware, meanwhile, is currently refocusing from selling traditional software licenses to a business model that emphasizes recurring revenue. The company switched several of its license-based product lines to subscription and software-as-a-service pricing models last year. The new collaboration with Google will advance VMware’s recurring revenue growth effort by enhancing VMware Cloud Universal, an important part of its subscription solutions portfolio. 

The companies say joint customers can achieve significant savings when combining their respective cloud offerings. They estimate that an organization deploying Google Cloud VMware Engine together with VMware Cloud Universal can achieve average savings of more than $2 million per year.

Image: Google