In an ideal world, transitioning VMware workloads from datacenter to cloud would be seamless. The migration would be swift and optimized, cloud-native solutions would be leveraged effectively, and every license would be perfectly tuned to maximize its value.

But in the real world, most enterprises tackle the transition in two stages:

• Stage 1: Move datacenter like-for-like to major cloud provider.

• Stage 2: Reactively address new challenges in the cloud

At Matilda Cloud we offer an alternative to proactively avoid these challenges, but we also frequently help our customers address the two stage approach above. For those who are in this situation, let’s explore these challenges of the second stage and how we might address them…

Challenge 1: License Optimization and Cost Management

You made it to the cloud, but now your VMware licenses are expensive. What’s worse, Broadcom’s recent acquisition of VMware changed the model, raising prices like crazy.

Don’t panic, you have options! Not every enterprise has the leverage to negotiate with Broadcom, but you can still optimize or even eliminate your VMware licenses to keep costs under control.

Options to Address VMware License Cost Increase

Matilda Cloud’s platform offers automated approaches to address the cost, risk, and complexity of migration, as well as license optimization tools and cloud-to-cloud migration assessments to eliminate the difficulty of these options.

Challenge 2: Modernizing Workloads to Cloud-Native Compute

Modernizing cloud workloads after migration is a crucial step. For example, a large on-prem development environment instance can easily become costly in the cloud if it’s migrated like-to-like. The cloud’s pay-as-you-go pricing did not matter when your instances were on-prem, but now you’ll need to address it. Over-provisioned instances will become costly if not optimized for actual usage patterns.

Why Modernization is critical:

• Pay-as-you-go pricing: Continuous resource usage means higher costs in the cloud

• Over-Provisioning: Oversized instances will add unnecessary expense

• 24/7 Operations: Does it really need to run continuously?

• Cloud-native features: Features like auto-scaling, reserved instances, or spot instances help to lower cloud costs

Modernizing workloads to leverage cloud-native features improves performance and eliminates unnecessary costs.

Challenge 3: Runtime and Right-Sizing Optimization

In the cloud, optimizing runtime and right-sizing workloads is an essential step that is often overlooked in like-to-like migration. Skipping it impacts your bottom line and should be addressed quickly to improve cost efficiency.

For example, oversizing a production instance on-prem is a common practice. But in the cloud, this production instance would be underutilized after migration, requiring adjustment to fit its actual usage patterns. Right-sizing the instance helps to match its actual resource needs rather than maintaining an oversized instance.

Just as we discussed in the dev instance example, optimized instances should also take advantage of cloud-based pricing models like reserved instances and the like.

By right sizing and taking advantage of cloud-specific pricing features, your organization can maintain performance levels while lowering costs.

Avoiding These Challenges Altogether

If your organization is taking a 2-step approach to VMware migration, you should be aware of the challenges and keep in mind your options to control spiraling costs. If your organization is still considering a VMware migration, Matilda Cloud offers state-of-the-art tools to avoid the pitfalls of the two-step approach.

With Matilda Cloud’s platform, you will…

• Rapidly speed up assessments and migrations

• Maximize efficiency and ROI in your transition

• Avoid downtime

• Reduce human error in the process

• Maintain compliance

• Improve security

• Proactively create value for your organization by avoiding unnecessary challenges

We highly recommend taking advantage of best-in-class tools like Matilda Cloud’s state-of-the-art platform to leverage automation in your transformation journey.

Best of luck on your journey.