Customer Strategies for the VMware Acquisition

As cloud infrastructure becomes increasingly central to IT strategy and virtualisation technology evolves, VMware’s acquisition by Broadcom has prompted many organisations to reassess their long-term goals. Some may choose to continue with VMware, while others are considering alternative platforms that might better fit their future needs.

Here we explore approaches and key migration considerations for those looking to transition away from VMware.

What is the Right Approach After the VMware Acquisition?

While VMware continues to offer robust solutions, its acquisition presents an opportunity to revisit broader IT strategies. Instead of making reactive decisions, organisations should focus on developing a roadmap that aligns with long-term business objectives.

Start by evaluating your current setup, considering:

• Vendor relationships: How will this acquisition affect your support, licensing, and service agreements?
• Long-term sustainability: Will VMware’s solutions continue to meet your evolving business needs in the long term?
• Innovation and flexibility: Will your current setup enable you to adopt new technologies such as containerisation and serverless computing?

Conducting a cost-benefit analysis is crucial, weighing the benefits of staying with VMware against the potential advantages of switching to other platforms. This includes considering whether changes in pricing models or licensing structures impact your business operations and innovation capacity.

Planning a Migration Strategy From VMware

After evaluating your current IT landscape, planning a migration strategy becomes the logical next step. Successful migrations require a comprehensive plan aligned with your business goals and IT capabilities.

• Assess Your Infrastructure: Review the applications and workloads running on VMware. Identify legacy systems that may pose challenges during migration.
• Set Clear Goals: Determine the desired outcomes of the migration. Are you aiming to reduce costs, increase flexibility, or adopt new technologies like containerisation?
• Minimise Disruptions: Implement a phased migration to ensure business continuity and minimise the impact on critical workloads.
• Explore Hybrid Models: If a full transition isn’t feasible, consider a hybrid approach where VMware handles certain workloads while others migrate to newer platforms.

Options to Consider When Moving Away from VMware

When considering a move away from VMware, various options are available, each with its own set of advantages and challenges. Your choice will depend on specific requirements, goals, and the nature of your workloads.

Open-Source Products

Open-source software is developed collaboratively, with its source code freely available to the public for viewing, modification, and distribution. Open-source virtualisation platforms, such as KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) or Xen, offer viable alternatives to VMware, providing greater flexibility, lower costs, and customisation options. For organisations with the right skill set or those able to partner with managed service providers, open source can be an attractive choice.

The advantages of moving to open-source virtualisation include:

• Cost savings: Elimination of licensing fees can significantly reduce operational expenses.
• Customisation: Open-source platforms allow for deep customisation to meet unique business needs.
• Community support: Large, vibrant communities contribute to continuous innovation and provide support.

Alternative Hypervisors

A hypervisor is software that enables multiple operating systems to run on a single physical machine by managing and allocating hardware resources. For organisations looking to retain traditional virtualisation, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and Nutanix AHV are strong alternatives to VMware, providing comparable features but differing in cost structures and integration capabilities.

• Hyper-V integrates seamlessly with Microsoft products, making it an excellent choice for organisations already embedded in the Microsoft ecosystem.
• Citrix XenServer is particularly well-suited for environments that require robust desktop virtualisation solutions.
• Nutanix AHV (Acropolis Hypervisor) is a native hypervisor that is fully integrated with the Nutanix platform. It offers simplified management, reduces complexity, and eliminates licensing costs associated with third-party hypervisors. Nutanix AHV is ideal for organisations looking for a cost-effective, scalable, and easy-to-manage virtualisation solution.

Public Cloud

Public Cloud refers to computing services provided by third-party vendors over the internet, available on a pay-as-you-go basis. As cloud adoption accelerates, migrating workloads to the public cloud offers organisations greater flexibility, scalability, and cost efficiency. Leading providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud deliver robust virtualisation services, reducing the need for on-premises infrastructure management.

Additionally, moving to the public cloud can facilitate transitions to serverless computing or managed virtualisation services. However, careful planning is essential to ensure security, compliance, and data sovereignty are adequately addressed.

Containerisation

Containerisation packages applications and their dependencies into isolated units, or “containers,” allowing consistent operation across different environments. Through platforms like Kubernetes and Docker, containerisation provides a modern approach to application deployment and management, offering greater scalability and resource efficiency than traditional virtual machines.

While containerisation reduces overheads and increases agility, it often requires significant re-architecting of existing applications, making it a more complex transition than merely switching between virtualisation platforms.

OpenShift Virtualisation

OpenShift is Red Hat’s enterprise Kubernetes platform that simplifies the development and management of containerised applications. OpenShift Virtualisation extends this capability by enabling organisations to run and manage virtual machines (VMs) alongside containers in a single, unified Kubernetes environment. This ultimately allows you to handle both legacy virtualised applications and modern container workloads without needing separate platforms, reducing complexity and improving operational efficiency.

By integrating VMs and containers under one platform, OpenShift Virtualisation supports hybrid and multi-cloud environments, allowing seamless management across on-premises and cloud infrastructures. It's an ideal solution for organisations looking to gradually transition to cloud-native architectures while maintaining existing virtualised applications.

Feature Parity Versus Actual Virtualisation Requirements

One common pitfall when migrating from VMware is the temptation to focus too heavily on replicating every feature from the existing system. Instead, you should assess the companies’ actual virtualisation needs.

The decision to pursue feature parity or focus on baseline requirements depends on:

• Critical feature analysis: Identify the features essential to your business. Are advanced networking, storage, or high-availability clusters crucial, or can these needs be simplified?
• Cost-benefit trade-off: Advanced features often come with higher costs. Consider whether these features are truly necessary or if a streamlined solution would suffice.
• Futureproofing: Decide whether VMware’s advanced features are essential or if moving to a cloud-native architecture prioritising agility and scalability would better position you for future growth.

While VMware provides an extensive range of features, many may be unnecessary for organisations seeking to simplify operations. By focusing on core needs such as scalability, stability, and ease of management, you can build a more cost-effective and future-ready infrastructure.

Rethinking Your Virtualisation Strategy

The acquisition of VMware offers companies an opportunity to rethink their virtualisation strategies. Whether you stay with VMware, move to open-source solutions, adopt alternative hypervisors, migrate to the public cloud, or shift towards containerisation, your decision should align with your business objectives and future IT needs.

A strategic approach that carefully considers your feature requirements, cost implications, and innovation potential is key to a smooth transition and long-term success.

To learn more or discuss the right strategy for your organisation, contact our team today. We’re here to help you make the best decision for your IT landscape and business growth.