What Amazon Elastic VMware Service means for your cloud strategy

What Amazon Elastic VMware Service means for your cloud strategy

AWS has launched a new service – Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS) – and if you're managing VMware workloads, it's worth paying attention. Amazon EVS brings the full VMware Cloud Foundation stack directly into your AWS environment. It's a powerful capability, but also a technically complex one. To make the right strategic moves, you need to understand what this means for your VMware setup, your cloud plans, and your timing.

Amazon EVS allows you to run the full VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) stack – compute, storage, networking, and management tools – directly inside your AWS environment. For IT leaders managing VMware workloads on-premises, this means a rare opportunity: the ability to migrate VMware-based workloads to the AWS cloud.

Why Now: VMware uncertainty and the push toward cloud-native

Based on the recent European Cloud Competition Observatory (ECCO) report VMware licensing costs have surged by up to 1,500% in some regions following Broadcom’s acquisition, prompting a wave of customer migrations to alternative cloud platforms. If you’re feeling pressure from VMware licensing changes, hardware refresh timelines, or colocation contracts, you’re not alone. These costs are rising just as your teams are being asked to deliver faster innovation and enable AI and data-driven transformation.

The traditional answer – rip and replace – isn’t feasible for most. But the best option isn’t full refactoring either. A quick migrate to AWS native services often delivers the strongest ROI, helping you avoid VMware cost increases or contract lock-ins. Once in the cloud, you can modernize incrementally. Amazon EVS plays a strategic role here – not as a default migration path, but as a targeted solution for legacy workloads that must remain on VMware. It’s a complementary option, not a catch-all.

What Makes Amazon EVS Strategic

At its core, Amazon EVS is about enabling smart transition. It offers:

• Less-disruption migration of VMware workloads
• Operational consistency with existing people skills, tools and processes
• Proximity to AWS services, enabling hybrid architectures in both VMware and AWS, and better performance
• Scalability and resilience, backed by AWS’s global infrastructure

These benefits aren’t just technical – they’re strategic enablers. Amazon EVS allows you to avoid lengthy refactoring efforts while still gaining access to modern cloud capabilities. You can maintain business continuity, extend your existing operational model, and start innovating sooner – without needing to overhaul everything at once.

And because workloads sit directly within your AWS environment, you can layer in AWS native services like data analytics, business applications, or AI/ML tooling incrementally. You’re building toward cloud-native at your own pace – and making smarter infrastructure decisions along the way. This flexibility lets you decide what to keep on VMware and what to modernise natively – on your timeline.

The Bigger Picture: From Migration to Modernisation

Bringing workloads into AWS – even via Amazon EVS – isn’t just a cost move. It sets the stage for broader cloud transformation:

• Data can now be accessed by AWS AI/ML and analytics services
• Workloads are no longer tied to fixed on-prem infrastructure
• Modernization projects, specifically GenAI innovation projects, can start small, then scale

Once your workloads reside in AWS, you're no longer constrained by the limitations of physical infrastructure. You gain flexibility in how applications evolve, how data is integrated across services, and how your teams adopt new tools. This also creates a smoother path for future transformation: containerization, serverless compute, continuous optimization, and intelligent automation all become easier to explore. Amazon EVS becomes a bridge – not just to AWS, but to a more agile, scalable digital core. This model supports long-term agility while minimizing short-term disruption.

FinOps optimization plays a critical role in cloud strategy. While Amazon EVS offers a path for legacy workloads that must remain on VMware, it is not a low-cost option – it still requires VMware licensing and operational overhead. Organizations can achieve greater cost savings by migrating the majority of their workloads to AWS native services, thereby reducing their VMware footprint and exposure to license cost increases. This targeted approach helps lower VMware license costs and improves the ROI of running in AWS compared to maintaining on-premises infrastructure. Amazon EVS should be promoted as a strategic solution for the workloads that truly require VMware VCF, not as a default lift-and-shift path. For broader migrations, migrating to AWS native services remains the more cost-effective and scalable option.

Getting Started: What to Do Now

As always, timing matters. If you have a VMware renewal or infrastructure refresh coming up in the next 6 – 18 months, now is the time to assess:

• Which workloads can migrate to native AWS services?
• What are your cost-saving opportunities?
• How to plan your roadmap to integrate with AWS-native services over time?

SoftwareOne supports you throughout this journey with business case assessments, migration offers, AWS migration training, and managed services to help you move forward with confidence. You can start using the SoftwareOne Cloud Navigator to quickly assess your current AWS running costs and calculate your potential AWS funding contribution – helping you build a strong business case. Simply upload your RV Tools export to receive a cost estimate within minutes. From there, move into a formal migration engagement and, where appropriate, a Rapid Migration Offer (RMO). The RMO is available at a fixed price per VM migration and can be delivered at zero cost once AWS funding is applied.