VMware Cloud on AWS has been a service that is built to remain at the cutting edge of what VMware has to offer, with frequent updates and improvements. Despite these updates, there are still some exciting announcements to share with customers considering moving their workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS. Here are three key updates:

1. General Availability: VMware Cloud on AWS is now generally available for consumption, reducing the cost significantly for most workloads. This service was previously in preview, and the barrier to entry for interested customers has always been the cost, especially for storage-heavy workloads.

2. Scalable Datastore Storage: VMware Cloud on AWS now offers a jointly engineered solution with Amazon FSx for ONTAP, which is a multi-tenant and multi-protocol storage environment. This feature goes a long way in alleviating any storage management concerns and provides all the popular protocols such as NFS 3/4.1, iSCSI, or SMB. Additionally, it provides synchronous mirroring across availability zones for mission-critical workloads, offering peace of mind.

3. Flex Compute: VMware Cloud on AWS is introducing a new feature called Flex Compute, which allows customers to buy as many flexible compute units as they need and increase or decrease them as their computing needs change within minutes. This feature is significant for smaller customers who have found the starting costs of VMware Cloud on AWS to be too high for their budgets.

These updates are precisely what most customers were looking for, and I am confident that they will result in an uptick in organizations moving their workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS. The cost has been a significant barrier to entry for many potential customers, but with the new pricing model and scalable storage solutions, more businesses can now consider migrating their workloads to the cloud.