Migrate on Your Own Terms, with the Tools You Know and Trust
At VMware, we spend a lot of time with our communication services providers (CSPs) customers working to design and deploy network-based services such as Network Function Virtualization for 5G. Many of these CSPs are thinking carefully about the role public cloud can play in helping them achieve their business and technical goals for designing, deploying, and evolving network services.
On one hand, the benefits of public cloud are clear—dynamic scalability, simplified hardware management, potential cost savings. On the other, many CSP network teams have unique reliability and security requirements that require them to think about the journey to cloud in a different context than many of their enterprise counterparts.
In this blog series, we will share lessons learned through this work, starting with the top three questions we hear from CSP network teams considering the move to public cloud:
- Which applications are a fit for public cloud?
- Where should we start the migration journey?
- How should we conduct these migrations?
First Steps on the CSP Cloud Journey
Not surprisingly, many teams are choosing to start with back-office applications like OSS/BSS because, unlike network functions, back-office applications can often run unmodified on standard cloud infrastructure and are therefore a lighter lift. This is emerging as a key trend according to Omdia, which recently reported that up to 80% of telcos are planning to move back-office applications to public cloud.
At the same time, CSPs are telling us this is easier said than done. In particular, teams are focused on the question of “how” to migrate due to the myriad of considerations, from managing shared services such as identity and databases, to managing the complexity of mapping network and security policies to different cloud architectures. Questions frequently asked by business and technical teams include:
- How do we estimate the costs involved in rehosting applications to the public cloud?
- Should we redesign our L2/L3 networking architecture to work around cloud provider constraints, or can we do this in stages?
- Should we rethink our security and identity model around the cloud provider or continue to use what is already proven?
- Should we start with one public cloud provider, or should we pursue a multi-cloud strategy and invest in platforms and abstractions to ensure portability across multiple cloud platforms?
- How do we avoid lock-in at each step of the journey?
VMware can help with each of these challenges.
Simplifying Migration with VMware SDDC in the Public Cloud – Best of Both Worlds
Each cloud brings its own unique way of building, managing, securing, and connecting applications. Moving an application to a public cloud often means investing significant time and resources to get up to speed on that environment. Moreover, for teams prioritizing cloud portability, adopting a multi-cloud approach requires additional considerations, such as investing in the right-level abstractions and platforms, learning and managing multiple cloud environments, and ultimately developing the cloud cost management frameworks to track consumption and spending across multiple providers.
For CSPs using VMware Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) to host OSS/BSS applications, VMware provides CSPs with the best of both words – the familiarity of SDDC with the power of public cloud – through VMware Cloud™ (VMC) on AWS, Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, Azure VMware Solution, Google Cloud VMware Engine, and more. Using these platforms to support a cloud journey can help you:
- De-risk migration by moving to a proven, reliable prebuilt infrastructure with mature cloud security and single-pane-of-glass management
- Accelerate cloud wins by quickly rehosting in public cloud with VMware, and then re-architecting/refactoring applications at your own speed, on your own terms
- Do more with what you have by migrating to public cloud using the staff and skills you have now, since they’re working with VMware on both sides of the journey
A Recent Customer Example of Using VMware Cloud on AWS to Accelerate a Cloud Journey
VMware recently worked with a customer who needed to add capacity to their OSS/BSS applications quickly, but was running out of on-prem capacity. This customer weighed four scenarios:
- Expanding on-prem
- Moving to a new software architecture
- Rehosting to AWS
- Rehosting to VMC on AWS
Expanding on-prem was ruled out because of a corporate focus on consolidating data centers coupled with timing challenges introduced by increasing hardware lead-times.
Moving to a new software architecture represented either an RFP process and/or significant refactoring, and the team estimated this would require at least 6-18 months of work at significant cost.
Rehosting directly to AWS represented a steeper learning curve for the team and required rearchitecting the OSS/BSS application configuration as well as rethinking security, networking, and management.
Rehosting to VMC on AWS allowed the team to move the application with minimal changes and just as importantly, with the people and skills they already had.
Ultimately, this customer opted for VMC on AWS and was able complete the rehosting much faster than planned – the project was completed in a few weeks. The customer credited this result to using their existing SDDC processes, tools, and management. Best of all, with the time they saved, their teams were able to make rapid progress in charting the next steps on their cloud journey without having to reinvent their network design and security posture.
VMC on AWS saved the customer time and money, obviated the need for hiring new skillsets, and eliminated the risk of introducing new configurations and management tools.
Start Your Cloud Journey on Your Own Terms, with the Tools You Know and Trust
No matter where you are on your cloud adoption journey, or which path you choose, VMware can help you get there faster, cost-effectively, and with less complexity and risk. In upcoming blogs, we’ll dive deeper into how VMware technologies can simplify and accelerate cloud migrations. We’ll look at cloud cost modeling and examine specific use cases like disaster recovery. We will also look at VMware platforms and automation tools including VMware Tanzu™ Mission Control and VMware Aria.
