From VMWare to Where? Things to Consider Before Making the Strategic Decision

The companies that, in the back of their minds, had a desire to migrate to the cloud or become more cloud-native but were not able to justify this decision until now are in luck.

Now that the VMWare (and subsequently VMC on AWS) contracts are changing, customers are considering making a change themselves to better adapt to industry demands and get some cost benefits.

The move from a perpetual licensing model to a subscription-based model as well as the update in packaging policies have driven the cost curve up significantly. Companies mention the dramatic rise in their VMWare bills, with some reporting a couple of times the difference in yearly spending. Other strategic changes, like the end of many reseller contracts, also play a role when considering migration from VMWare. The research and advisory company Forrester predicted that in 2024, 20% of VMware enterprise customers would start to move away from the platform. Many other sources also confirm that this is truly happening.

One of the decisions VMWare, by Broadcom, has made was to stop the renewal of VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS. Starting April 30, 2024, VMware Cloud on AWS will no longer be available for direct purchase through AWS. The purchase of new subscriptions, additions of new services, or renewal of existing subscriptions is not available for existing customers.

All of these strategic changes force clients to reevaluate and readjust their virtualized infrastructure, which, consequently, creates room for improved efficiency and innovation. Clients need to make a strategic decision on whether to stay or migrate their workloads off of VMWare to other solutions or even from on-prem to the cloud. When it comes to workloads that are already on VMC on AWS, their owners also need to reassess their options, the easiest one of them would be to rehost directly to EC2 instances on the AWS with the help of AWS Application Migration Service (AWS MGN).

How to approach the unknown?

In other circumstances, the ideal approach would be to review each workload and decide which migration strategy would be the best fit. In reality, the change in the licensing approach enforces tight deadlines for the migration efforts and creates few opportunities to start the workload modernizations that come with re-architecting and re-platforming migration strategies. Customers need to make a quick and smart decision before the time to renew their licenses comes. 

What are the options?

VMWare clients have quite a few options to choose from. The questions they should be asking themselves are the following:

1. Do they want to stay on VMware even with the price change? 
   
   Companies mention that depending on the type of workload and the use of the VMware products, the price increase might be adequate and adaptable compared to the efforts of moving to a new environment and working with multiple vendors instead of one.
   
   
2. If they have determined that the move from VMWare is necessary, do they want to stay on-prem or are they ready to move to the cloud?
   
   There are multiple virtualization solutions that companies are actively evaluating and comparing to VMware products. The main ones are Proxmox, Hyper-V (especially for clients who already have a footprint in the Microsoft ecosystem), Nutanix AHV, XCP-NG, and oVirt. If the customers are ready to move to the cloud and forget about late-night patching, they can choose any of the public cloud providers, each of them offering a similar set of features and a wide range of discounts. The most popular options here are AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, and IBM Cloud.
   
   
3. If the move to the cloud seems like a good option, then a direction is needed, meaning the target cloud provider needs to be carefully chosen. To make this decision easier, customers can engage with a migration partner who will assist with the migration process and guide them on the cloud adoption journey.

3.1  If the license renewal is not too close on the horizon, there is an opportunity to migrate to the cloud “the right way.” This means that each workload will be assessed for possibilities to not only right-size but also modernize along the way, choosing an appropriate migration strategy for each case.

As always, the ideal solution will be different for each customer, and it needs to be examined and benchmarked per use case. Overall, the workload should end up in a secure environment (as this should be a top priority), ready to handle production workloads, cost-effective, and reliable (that would not create a need to move workloads again soon).

Those who want to stay on-prem might go for another hypervisor or some other VMware product alternative. Those who have decided that this VMware change was the last straw that made the move to the cloud inevitable will need to choose a target cloud.

The main factors to take into consideration when making this decision will be:

1. Where are the majority of the workloads now?
2. How big are the workloads, and do they need to scale?
3. Are the workloads mission-critical?
4. What is the cost of the move to the cloud?
5. What is the cost of staying with VMWare?
6. What is the cost of testing and moving to another on-prem virtualization solution?
7. What are the cost-saving programs that cloud providers offer?
8. What does the migration process look like? What is the suite of migration tools the cloud provider offers? What are the timelines? Are there proven frameworks that could speed up the migration?

Important to know

AWS offers a complimentary VMware Migration Assessment of the current state of VMware workloads that will help companies make data-driven decisions. It will also help them see the right-sizing and cost-savings opportunities, as well as evaluate licensing options.  

Another good point to mention is that until December 31, 2024, VMware Cloud on AWS customers can use the AWS VMware Migration Accelerator, which allows them to earn AWS promotional credits for migrating virtual machines (VMs) to Amazon EC2.

Next Steps

As mentioned earlier, each company’s use case and ideal outcome in this situation are different.

However, it is absolutely a good idea to proactively assess VMware's overall use, especially when it comes to license consumption. It is worth reviewing the alternatives well before the contracts are up for renewal or pricing increases are imminent. Having a strategic view of the next steps and understanding potential bottlenecks and ways to overcome them is the key to success in the long run. Ippon is here to help you make the right decisions based on the facts and data and also walk you through this transition.

Why Ippon?

Ippon is an AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) Partner, meaning that we have the skills and knowledge to help VMWare customers migrate their workloads to AWS. Ippon is there for our clients from start to finish of their migration journey. With the help of current state assessments, precise planning, and many other supporting activities, we ensure that the workloads get to their target platform quickly and with as little downtime as possible. It does not matter if the VMWare environment that needs to be moved is on-prem or on VMC on AWS; Ippon has the expertise to migrate it using proven frameworks. Ippon has helped to migrate workloads for companies in Finance, Insurance, Healthcare, and other industries. When it comes to the migration process, the same tested frameworks work great for all business domains. However, the individual client’s compliance requirements with industry standards are always regarded as the highest priority. 

Feel free to contact us for any cloud migration-related questions. Ippon is a trusted migration partner who is here to help you! To learn more about cloud migrations, read our latest eBook, “Assessing the Maturity of Your Cloud Strategy,” or check out our Cloud Migration On-Demand Webinar Series, where we discuss how to prepare an organization for a seamless transition to the cloud.