Broadcom’s Focus On VMware Cloud Foundation
With their acquisition of VMware, Broadcom has shifted VMware’s strategic focus towards VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), leveraging the entire stack of VMware software offerings to build highly scalable and automated software-defined data centers. This stack will not only include the traditional VMware vSphere hypervisor, but also networking, storage, monitoring, reporting, automation, and orchestration tools. By focusing on the compatibility and interoperability of these tools within the VMware Cloud Foundation stack, this approach will serve as a foundation for both private and public cloud environments.
Traditionally, many customers only used a few of the products within the VCF suite. Broadcom’s focus is to develop the entire suite as a single integrated package, and to drive more customers to leverage this suite within their environments. As a result, it is now impossible for customers to acquire certain individual VMware products outside of the VCF suite. Broadcom has also removed the option for perpetual licenses, preferring subscriptions with a term of 3 years or more.
With these changes, many customers have upgraded to 3 year VCF subscriptions. However, many customers are still only using vCenter and vSphere and not taking advantage of the entire VCF suite. Also, some customers are concerned with the length of a 3 year subscription and may not plan on remaining entirely in their data center that long. With these concerns in mind, some customers are beginning to ask “what is next” after purchasing their VCF subscriptions. For many customers, this will come down to one of two options: begin to adopt the entire VCF suite to realize the value of their investment, or use the Bring Your Own Subscription (BYOS) offer to migrate to a VMware public cloud service and receive a discount for the subscription that has already been purchased. Some customers will combine both options, maintaining some workloads on-premises and other workloads in a public cloud VMware service, both running the exact same VCF software suite.
Option One: Adopt the full VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Platform On-Premises
While it’s entirely possible to purchase a VCF subscription but only install and use one or two of the component pieces (such as vSphere and/or vSAN), the true power of a private cloud operating model can only be realized by adopting the full VCF stack, including SDDC Manager, a Management Domain with certified vSAN ReadyNodes, one or more Workload Domains with vSAN or third-party external storage, NSX virtual networking, and the Aria Suite of automation and orchestration tools. As a Broadcom Expert Advantage services partner, Presidio is uniquely positioned to help you fully adopt your VMware Cloud Foundation subscription on-premises and begin experiencing a private cloud operating model today.
Once your initial VCF infrastructure has been built, Presidio can also assist in scaling your VCF infrastructure across multiple geographic locations, as well as implementing add-on solutions such as VMware Live Recovery and VMware vDefend Firewall with Advanced Threat Prevention.
Option Two: Bring Your Own VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Subscription to the Public Cloud
There are several reasons why a 3 year commitment to your on-prem VCF infrastructure may not align with your long term strategic plan. With Broadcom requiring a minimum 3 year term for many VCF subscriptions, some customers are concerned about losing their VCF investment if they migrate to the cloud. Others may actually feel as if the 3 year VCF investment has tied them to an on-prem environment they were planning to migrate away from. This is where Broadcom’s Bring Your Own Subscription (BYOS) option can actually help customers migrate away from on-prem infrastructure and into the cloud.
Broadcom has announced support for both Azure VMware Solution (AVS) and Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) for their BYOS program. This will allow the providers of VMware Cloud solutions to remove VCF subscriptions from their cost and allow the customer to bring their on-prem subscriptions with them to these services. Previously, a customer would abandon their on-prem licenses or subscriptions for a cloud service that had licensing bundled in by the service provider. BYOS is an excellent way to create a path to the cloud for Broadcom customers, with VMware Cloud offerings that allow for a faster and often less expensive cloud migration for VCF workloads.
What is Next?
As a Broadcom Expert Advantage services partner, Presidio is ready to assist you with any of your VMware Cloud Foundation needs. Whether it is building a strategy to create a private cloud with VCF, or leveraging VCF to simplify a migration to the public cloud, or a combination of the two, Presidio has the experience and expertise to assist you in realizing those goals. Please reach out to your Presidio representative to learn more about how we can partner with you on your Broadcom and VMware journey.
