VMware's vCloud Air 'knocks Amazon Web Services out of the park' claims Bluefin head of IT
Kevin Turnbull claims AWS gave Bluefin zero capability to export its SAP systems
Bluefin Solutions, a global management consultancy that specialises in SAP implementations, has switched from using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to VMware's vCloud Air so that it could export its SAP systems back on-premise.
Kevin Turnbull, head of IT at Bluefin Solutions, explained that the company had been a VMware customer for the last five years and that the company runs a fully virtualised infrastructure which is based on VMware technologies.
The company used to build its infrastructure out on AWS but after its test and development stages, struggled to move SAP systems back on-premise and instead had to entirely rebuild them.
"One of the pain points we had was when a customer came to ask us for a demo that we could put in the cloud," said Turnbull.
"What we'd traditionally have to do is pull the system out in the cloud and then go through different SAP functional points within the company to get it bolted and developed for the client.
"But once you built it out in AWS there is no way of moving your data or solution that you have built back on-premise or onto another system," he added.
"Obviously this makes no sense, but AWS gives us zero capability to export, so it essentially forced us into a slow and inefficient way of working".
Turnbull suggested that the switch to vCloud has meant that Bluefin can have a demo system on-premise and move it quickly to the cloud.
He also said that the solution plugged into Bluefin's existing infrastructure very easily. As Bluefin already had a VMWare environment, its employees found it easy to work with the solution as the interface was the same.
"We started using vCloud during the beta phase, we found that it was easy to plug into our current infrastructure and it delivered a true hybrid model," Turnbull stated.
Bluefin had the VMware environment fully setup and integrated with the beta vCloud Air in just two days.
"Setting up the equivalent with Amazon Web Services could have taken weeks," he said.
An added benefit to switching to vCloud is that Bluefin will save costs, according to Turnbull.
"Where we are going to see real cost savings is when it comes to our refresh. I don't need to refresh our hardware estate because I can now just move my products and demos and core systems into the cloud," he said.
As for the long-term choice of VMware, he said that Bluefin trusts the company and that is why it has confidence that once it moves everything to the cloud it will be stable and solid.
The next step, Turnbull said, is to look into how vCloud could be used for disaster recovery.
