Whether you work at a small business or a very large enterprise, I’d be willing to bet that you have considered moving your applications and data to the public cloud. After all, “the cloud” is everywhere. We are barraged by cloud advertisements on TV, the radio, and the Internet telling us that “we will be left behind if we don’t move to the cloud”.
According to IDC, the bulk of large enterprises already run VMs in the public cloud. And not only do customers want a hybrid cloud strategy – 65% of organizations say they already have a hybrid cloud strategy today. According to Gartner, total public cloud spending through 2019 is projected to reach $318B. Particularly hot is Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Gartner predicts that 87% of organizations will be using an IaaS platform by 2017.
That being said, practical enterprise IT practitioners (like you) know that around the public cloud is a ton of hype that doesn’t apply to every company and every workload. YES, there can be real value and huge benefits to moving to the public cloud but that doesn’t mean that a wholesale move to the cloud is smart either.
The migration of specific applications and certain data must be done strategically and only after thorough analysis. Most enterprise IT infrastructures today are too complex to for a single person with a spreadsheet and a calculator to perform that analysis accurately and in a timely manner. For that reason, there are numerous tools popping up to help perform that analysis however most of those tools have a hefty price tag and you’ll have to do it yourself.
Recently, VMware has made their Hybrid Cloud Assessment tool available for free, for 60 days. On top of the free tool, they provide one of their cloud experts to assist you in performing the analysis and analyzing the results. The great thing is that, you likely don’t need to use it for 60 days, or even 6 days to learn what you need to know to determine what workloads you should move to the cloud (if any).
The Hybrid Cloud Assessment tool will, in less than 3 hours, analyze your existing vSphere infrastructure, determine what it would cost to run that same workload in the public cloud, and then report back to you the cost of running your workload vs the cost of running the same workloads in the private cloud. Only once you have that knowledge can you make smart choices about cloud migration, for your company, for specific workloads, and for specific public clouds.
The report will compare the cost of running your workload in your own private cloud to running the same workload in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. The analysis reports also go deep and provide information like the average cost of running a VM and cost across different lines of business as well as ways to reclaim costs in your private cloud.
Let’s find out how Hybrid Cloud Assessment works.
Hybrid Cloud Assessment, Step by Step
Using HCA is easy. Here’s the process:
1. Go to sign up for the (free) VMware Hybrid Cloud Assessment at – http://www.vmware.com/go/hca-contact-us
2. You’ll be contacted from a HCA expert who will ensure that you get the HCA virtual appliance downloaded and installed into your virtual appliance. The actual download and deployment process take only about 30 minutes. The virtual appliance that is used is vRealize Business for Cloud.
3. After a quick analysis, the HCA will provide you an in-depth report that you can use to determine the best place for your workloads. The report will show you the cost to run your workload across a private cloud, across AWS, and across Azure.
You’ll receive a fine-grained cost analysis showing the cloud consumption of your lines of business in your own private cloud.
And, if you have vRealize Operations in your environment, you’ll get reclamation opportunities showing how you can save money in your current infrastructure as a part of Hybrid Cloud Assessment report. If required, run the free vSphere Optimization Assessment (VOA) to get started with vRealize Operations.
Getting Started With The Hybrid Cloud Assessment
The great thing about HCA is that it’s totally free and you get help in the deployment and analysis from a VMware Hybrid Cloud Expert. Run HCA to make informed cloud infrastructure spending decisions and discover opportunities to save significant amount of money on your current vSphere infrastructure.
To try out VMware’s free Hybrid Cloud Assessment, go to – HCA Get My Report.
