While the value of migrating from on-prem data centres to the public cloud is clear to many enterprises, the prospect of doing so is nevertheless daunting. That’s why it can take a strong compelling event – such as an imminent infrastructure refresh, increasing data centre management costs, need to meet hyperscaler spend commitments or a data centre closure or contract renewal – before decision makers finally take the plunge.
Broadcom’s recent acquisition of VMware, with the subsequent license hike and the termination of perpetual licenses, are a case in point. These moves prompted enterprises to evaluate the risk and cost of their on-prem data centres and look to the major cloud providers for alternatives. Indeed, Forrester predicted that during 2024, 20% of large VMware enterprise clients will begin to move off VMware.
Why Google Cloud VMware Engine?
Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) is a hosting solution, built by Google Cloud, VMware and Intel, which streamlines VMware migration to the cloud. It allows enterprises to create a VMware private cloud on GCP with a single platform to manage the virtual machines. The solution reduces the cost of change for cloud adoption, especially where a fervent desire exists to retain the technologies, knowledge, skills, and investment in VMware that are already in-house.
GCVE can reduce pricing substantially. For example, GCVE masks the costs of the VMware licenses by bundling them with compute costs. This helps companies that are unsure about their future relationship and procurement processes with Broadcom.
GCVE also offers transparent pricing – which is often lacking in an on prem data centre – and cuts costs due by reducing management overhead on the client for the underlying infrastructure and facilities.
According to a study by the VMware Cloud Economics team, users can expect to save on average 45% of the total cost of ownership from reductions in labour costs, hardware acquisition, and VMware licenses.
Furthermore, GCVE offers a stepping-stone to full VMware replacement, paving a gradual path to modernisation with cloud-native services on Google Cloud Platform.
Sourced Group’s GCVE Migration Service
Deploying GCVE at an enterprise scale can be complex and many enterprises are looking to industry experts for assistance.
Sourced Group (Sourced) collaborated with Google Cloud to enhance GCVE with new capabilities and created a GCVE Migration Service which builds on GCVE features but adds new automation, capabilities and controls to reduce the cost of change and risk associated with cloud migrations.
For enterprises however, moving VMware workloads using the GCVE Migration Service is about much more than just hosting and cost savings. Workloads hosted in GCVE benefit from the ease and speed of integration with Google Cloud Platform’s native services, opening the door to a host of new tooling, capabilities, and opportunities such as in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
Five Reasons to Deploy GCVE with Sourced
- Rapid, low-risk data centre exit: Sourced leverages extensive automation and cloud lifecycle services for GCVE, avoiding manual operations (“ClickOps”), while enabling customers to rapidly migrate thousands of VMs. This makes operations leaner, increases reliability and security, and reduces human error.
- Proven track record: Sourced successfully implemented GCVE at one of the world’s most respected investment banks, achieving a quick, secure, and cost-effective migration while maintaining regulatory compliance. This experience can easily be replicated for organisations in banking and other verticals.
- Predictable low-cost migration: Using Sourced’s developed reference architecture, code templates, extensive automation, as well as a scalable hybrid onshore-offshore teaming mix, Sourced can accelerate your VMware migration and deliver it at a low fixed price.
- Secure, automated operations: Sourced applies automation, configuration management, and controls to the GCVE platform, enabling a lean, cost-effective operating model. Key controls, deployment, and management workflows are highly segregated to guard against risks from misconfiguration and improper use.
- Multi-region redundancy and disaster recovery: The solution includes multiple layers of design and operational redundancy and disaster recovery, as well as automated patching and versioning to ensure the solution keeps pace with Google updates. The solution can also be configured for multi-region redundancy to protect against worst-case scenarios
For more information, contact us as enquiries@sourcedgroup.com
