The right technology with near-real-time insights that allows for proactive adaptation to market changes and business goals is the ultimate goal. This is exactly what telecommunications company CenturyLink, was able to accomplish with a software-defined everything strategy. Facing challenges with legacy storage, they looked to hybrid cloud infrastructure, built by VMware.
VMware Cloud Foundation’s single interface provided solutions and opportunities so that customers can leverage CenturyLink’s 31 private cloud locations, more than 2,560 third-party and CenturyLink data centers, over 150,000 on-net buildings, 450,000-plus miles of fiber with direct lines to major cloud providers, and experts with more than 100 cloud certifications combined.
Technology moves fast, but with VMware, the ability to scale is built-in. Here’s how the full-stack platform supports IT needs and transforms business.
Software-Defined Networking Built by VMware
From the beginning, Century Link recognized the importance of moving to a Software-Defined Networking approach. From the archaic and time-intensive task of building individually siloed pillars of compute, storage, network and security, they now have a single full-stack software solution built by VMware.
VMware Cloud Foundation allows Century Link to accelerate digital transformation in order to meet business needs and transform networking and security.
“Combining VMware Cloud Foundation with the vCloud Director interface allowed CenturyLink to create a hosted private cloud infrastructure product that scales from a small to a very large number of virtual machines with all the controls from one interface. Our enterprise customers are requiring hosted private clouds with the agility that a software-defined networking and hyperconverged infrastructure provides.”
– Steven Nolen, Senior Product Manager, Century Link
VMware Cloud Foundation is a single, powerful interface. For IT, this flexibility streamlines the process for architecting, testing, monitoring, and managing the infrastructure. The solution is customizable and allows for rapid deployments and flexible architecture, reducing time and cost, and helping CenturyLink meet a broad range of customers’ cloud requirements. Modern business requires agility, and VMware Cloud Foundation frees up time and resources so you can focus on your customer.
Hyperconverged Infrasture with VMware Cloud Foundation
The performance benefits CenturyLink customers sought for their database workloads were expensive to provide using traditional SAN storage. The cost of storage was constantly a burden on CenturyLink’s budget, representing a major portion of their data center deployment costs. High storage costs ultimately hindered their competitiveness, hurting their overall business.
Using hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) powered by vSAN, CenturyLink alleviated costs associated with the legacy storage solution. By enabling granular scaling and the ability to use affordable, non-proprietary flash drives, vSAN lowered their capital expenditures. Similarly, vSAN supported lower operational expenses with rapid deployment and automated storage provisioning. When CenturyLink needs to open a new data center, hyperconverged infrastructure keeps the cost and hardware footprint low. On one recent data center deployment, for example, CenturyLink was able to save $1.2 million.
True Flexibility Transforms Business
One of the greatest challenges any business faces is operational complexity. CenturyLink sought an alternative that was easier to manage and use for both the company and their customers. They also needed a solution that could be more flexible to the changing needs of their business and customers. Management of their past storage solution was complicated and resource-intensive. CenturyLink had approximately 30,000 VMs on various brands and models of storage devices, which was hard for teams to maintain.
“VMware Cloud Foundation allows CenturyLink the flexibility to meet a much broader suite of solutions and opportunities for our customers.”
– Steven Nolen, Senior Product Manager, Century Link
VMware Cloud Foundation provides a flexible, easy-to-use solution for CenturyLink and their customers. Unlike their old storage solution, the flexible architecture of VMware Cloud Foundation allows CenturyLink to meet a broad range of customers’ requirements in just a few clicks. The solution empowers better manageability, scalability, and control over VM performance. By deploying all-flash vSAN storage clusters at six data centers that support CenturyLink Cloud, CenturyLink was able to offer customers a range of performance and redundancy options to best suit their individual needs.
VMware Cloud Foundation enables a standardized, stable, repeatable, and efficient API-driven deployment model and reduces deployment timelines from months to weeks.
Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure Built by VMware
By implementing the full stack of VMware Cloud Foundation solutions, companies can migrate to the hybrid cloud and equip their business for the future in no time. Start reaping the benefits of hybrid cloud infrastructure today. Learn about VMware Cloud Foundation here.
