Broadcom's $60B-plus acquisition of VMware has prompted a seismic shift in the industry, with enterprises reevaluating their virtualization and infrastructure strategies and examining whether they should migrate environments.
This transition is driven not only by the acquisition itself but primarily by the subsequent rise in license fees and sun-lighted support. Some enterprises are being quoted prices that are three times what they were last year. Broadcom’s acquisition also ended VMware’s relationship with Amazon regarding AWS Cloud. VMware cloud is now no longer resold by AWS or its channel partners.
All of these changes are pushing businesses to migrate to cloud-native alternatives, such as the native IBM Cloud, AWS EC2, Google Cloud GCE, and Azure VMs. In fact, Forrester believes that up to 20% of VMware enterprise customers plan to migrate away from its virtualization stack in the coming year.
However, moving everything from VMware to the cloud will likely be too expensive, so most of these organizations are exploring the best multi and hybrid cloud strategies, using both on-premise and cloud environments in tandem.
Migrating away from VMware and using cloud-native solutions offers three main advantages:
1) Agility and Scalability:
Cloud-native offerings empower enterprises to scale their infrastructure dynamically, matching resources to demand in real time. This elasticity enables businesses to respond swiftly to changing market conditions and customer needs, fostering innovation and competitiveness.
2) Cost Savings:
While the initial appeal of on-premises solutions may lie in perceived cost savings, reality often paints a different picture. With the total cost of ownership (TCO) factoring in not just upfront expenses but also ongoing maintenance, support, and scalability, cloud-native offerings can offer significant savings — especially over VMware’s new pricing.
3) Security and Compliance:
Security and compliance remain paramount concerns for enterprises, especially in highly regulated industries. Cloud providers invest heavily in robust security measures and compliance certifications, alleviating many of the burdens associated with maintaining on-premises infrastructure.
Navigating the VMware Migration to the Public Cloud:
Migrating to cloud-native offerings typically requires careful planning and execution. Enterprises have historically needed to assess their current infrastructure, evaluate the suitability of various cloud platforms, and develop a comprehensive migration strategy. Then they needed to manage the entire migration process.
VMware Migration-as-a-Service to the Cloud
However, today Wanclouds offers Migration-as-a-Service (MaaS) for streamlined migration of VMware to cloud-native environments.
Wanclouds VPC+ automation suite gives you a single pane of glass to manage your entire migration from VMware to AWS, IBM Cloud, or other clouds. Say goodbye to the complexities of migration and embrace the efficiency of automating it in a matter of hours.
The existing VMware environment can be in the Cloud or On-Premise, while the destination can be set up as a Cloud VPC, hence removing the need for VMware at the destination. However, on-prem VMware can also be migrated to IBM Cloud VCF (VMware on IBM Cloud) offering as an option. Wanclouds provides a comprehensive migration for VMware workloads, including Linux, Windows VMs, Kubernetes, or Red Hat OpenShift clusters, and user data. Its MaaS offering takes out all the hassles of migrations with a rapid migration approach, leveraging VPC+ along with its cloud expert team.
Modernize and Diversify Disaster Recovery
Even if you are not using the cloud today, Wanclouds solution provides several benefits and makes it easy to adopt a public cloud such as IBM Cloud or AWS. It allows you to take advantage of cloud-native features and be ready to restore your infrastructure and workloads in a non-VMware public cloud environment. The additional choice and flexibility enable you to either maintain both VMware and cloud environments or completely exit VMware and fully transform to a public cloud environment.
Leverage Public Cloud VPC as DR Site for VMware On-Premise
In addition to complete migration, Wanclouds can also help customers set up a public cloud as a disaster recovery site for VMware workloads. The methodology and techniques of Wanclouds provide better RTO and RPO metrics in case of a disaster. Wanclouds concept of Warm DR, provides the most cost-effective DR across VMware and non-VMware public cloud infrastructure. The user can take regular backups of their data using an incremental backup policy, while the full image of the virtual machine can be backed up as needed. Data and images can be restored on-demand in the cloud.
Wanclouds Recent VMware Migrations to the Cloud
Wanclouds has been helping dozens of companies over the last few weeks in begging to back up VMware VMs to the cloud and move forward with a migration strategy to the cloud. Past migration examples include working with a large financial services institution to migrate OpenShift and VMware VMs to the cloud. It supported the company in setting up backup and restore for both migration and disaster recovery purposes.
This included both virtual servers and Red Hat OpenShift clusters hosted in on-premise environments to the cloud.
It also recently helped an airline management company migrate VMware to cloud-native VMs. Wanclouds helped the company migrate a multi-tenant VMware environment with several hundred virtual machines to the cloud, including setting up a public cloud environment with load balancers, IPSec, VPNs, and edge firewalls.
Dip a Toe in the Cloud While Keeping VMware
Even if you’re not sure if you want to make the full migration from VMware to cloud-native right now, you can begin backing up to the public cloud while keeping your VMware environment. This enables you to dip your toe into cloud-native without commiting to migrating your full infrastructure.
- Setup the public cloud VPC as a landing zone for VMs, Data, and workloads
- Discover the source VMware environment
- Configure and set security policies
- Backup VMs, Data, and Workloads to public cloud
- Work with the customer to set up cloud DR as a Warm, Hot, or Cold DR site
- Test/Verify DR setup
- Provide cloud DR support as part of Wanclouds DRaaS subscription offering
Migrating Out of VMware to the Public Cloud Today
If you’re interested in moving from VMware to the public cloud right now, you don’t need to wait! With Wanclouds, you can even pay as you migrate. Wanclouds offers an all-inclusive per-unit price (e.g., a server, a storage volume, a Database, a network function, etc.). This is more than 50% savings compared to legacy migration solutions. Wanclouds will enable you to automate and enable:
- Discover the source VMware environment
- Setup the public cloud VPC as a landing zone for VMs, Data, and workloads
- Configure and set security policies
- Migrate VMs, Data, and workloads to the public cloud
- Verify, test, and bring up production
- Provide post-migration cloud support as required
Contact Wanclouds today for the best and most cost-effective way to migrate from VMware to public and native cloud environments.