The recent acquisition of VMware by Broadcom has dominated the tech news cycles. The impact of this merger is substantial, with implications that reach far beyond the immediate industry landscape. We are witnessing a truly catalytic moment in technology. As Broadcom unveils new details and adjusts its strategy, it becomes evident that significant changes are underway. One notable shift is the discontinuation of perpetual licensing. Instead, a new subscription model is set to replace it. Under this model, in the best-case scenario, 56 products will be bundled together. Furthermore, certain VMware products, such as Horizon, are slated for divestment. In other cases, products are simply set to be retired. These developments mark a significant restructuring within the VMware ecosystem, signaling a transformative phase in the industry.
VMware is a staple in the data center! The certification paths are long, grueling and for years rewarding. As data center experts you drove the physical to virtual (P2V) conversion of hundreds if not thousands of bare metal servers running individual operating systems from Windows and various flavors of Unix in what became an ocean of private clouds. Your skills built and executed around VMware took the tech world by storm, data centers collapsed large compute farms and reduced large real estate of rack space by driving the virtualization of hundreds of physical servers to a handful of very powerful ESXi hosts. The technology industry was changed in large part by the delivery and application of your skills! This revolutionary approach to deploying servers virtually and on demand created the avenue for what we know as Cloud Infrastructure as a Service.
Today, every VMware customer and administrator is pondering the future path ahead. The pivotal factor in decision-making lies in pricing, which will likely determine whether they opt to remain on-premises or transition to another platform. One thing remains certain: any migration path taken will necessitate conversion and re-platforming—a transformative moment.
Data center teams, my peers, I’m speaking to you directly. Now, more than ever, is the moment to embrace cloud! I’ve had countless conversations that have revolved around our collective expertise in building clouds within the data center. Today is the day to drive transformative discussions on shifting from on-premises infrastructure towards cloud-centric infrastructure, encompassing both IaaS and cloud-native approaches.
All the skills you’ve honed through implementation, coupled with a profound understanding of scalability, high availability, and maturity, seamlessly translate into the realm of cloud.. Embracing this change will be the best thing that happens to your career and will bring a wealth of knowledge to the cloud for your organizations!
Let’s explore how your data center skills will provide huge value to cloud deployments.
| Design principle | VMware on-premises | Google Cloud |
| Performance-driven design | Affinity rules, server clusters, tiered storage, processor selection, monitoring and observability | Zone/regional architectures, storage deployment for NAS, Flash, POSIX, and more, cloud native or vendor preferred observability |
| Security | Firewalls, authentication, key management, zero trust, etc. | Firewalls, authentication, key management, zero trust, etc. |
| Business continuity | Backup, replication, Failover/Failback, archiving, RPO/RTO compliance | Backup, replication, Failover/Failback, archiving, RPO/RTO compliance |
| Robust architectures | High availability and scalable in data center or co-los | Multiple Google Cloud regions to choose from. Each region can be your additional co-lo. |
| Vendor landscape | Purpose-built tools to address technology needs via direct relationships as well as partner brokers | Many of the same technologies are available in the Google Cloud Marketplace, allowing you to maintain those relationships. |
The high-level overview clearly demonstrates that the skills you’ve cultivated in the data center can seamlessly transfer to the cloud. Whether you’re leveraging virtual machine replication technologies, storage-based replication technologies, or database-level replication, your expertise remains invaluable.
Have you identified the need for a SIEM like QRadar or SolarWinds? Perhaps your data center architecture already leverages observability and monitoring solutions. These solution designs are pertinent in any cloud journey. The primary challenge lies in how to implement them within a cloud reference architecture as opposed to an on-premises reference architecture. However, what truly matters is your core knowledge of why these solutions are necessary, how to implement them effectively, and the requirements they fulfill.
If dabbling in cloud is new in your career, start with a familiar solution stack like Google Cloud VMware Engine. Let’s go over some of the reasons that Google Cloud VMware Engine is a great starting point:
- Platform flexibility to scale on demand. Have full vCenter control with integrations to VMware’s capabilities like Aria, NSX, and more. These are products and tools that you are familiar with.
- Your skills port directly over to Google Cloud VMware Engine which allows your team time to scale and adopt cloud infrastructure skills at large!
- Broadcom and Google have jointly released a VMware Cloud Foundations license portability program here. Through this initiative, customers can purchase subscriptions for the new VMware Cloud Foundation software from Broadcom and utilize those subscriptions flexibly within Google Cloud VMware Engine.
- Google Cloud VMware Engine offers price protection with 1-year or 3-year Committed Use Discounts available on both month-to-month and upfront payment plans. This ensures price security as you navigate and determine your future path.
- Leveraging third-party tools like Zerto, Palo Alto, Datadog, and others? No problem. They all integrate seamlessly on Google Cloud and GCVE! If you love them, keep them.
As you navigate your future options, consider making Google Cloud one of your top choices. The extensive VMware integrations across the entire Google Cloud Platform ecosystem offer your organization a path to an innovative future. Gain access to a wide array of tools, including Artificial Intelligence (VertexAI), data lakes (BigQuery, BigTable), analytics visualization (Data Studio), leading development platforms (GKE, AppEngine, APIGEE), the fastest global network, the most secure cloud infrastructure, modular scalability, and much more. These tools are readily accessible and seamlessly integrate with your GCVE stack. Be a champion of innovation!
Having successfully migrated millions of workloads to Google Cloud and boasting the highest number of customer deployments for Google Cloud VMware, SADA can guide you through these transitions. Not only are we exclusively focused on Google Cloud Platform, but we also have extensive experience in the VMware landscape, collaborating closely with Broadcom and Google. More than just expertise, we’re passionate about helping customers succeed. We’ll work alongside your teams to provide education, support the ramp-up process, and ensure a smooth delivery.
Let’s start a conversation about how VMware on Google Cloud can benefit your organization. Book a discovery call, and as a gesture of gratitude for taking the time to meet, you’ll receive a voucher for a free pair of custom Nikes (Limited offer till the end of May 2024).
