We talk a lot about the rapid pace of change in enterprise IT. Over the past four years, that pace has become difficult for many organizations to keep up with, leaving them more vulnerable than ever to technology risk. While everything from cybersecurity to emerging technologies demands the attention of IT departments, rethinking infrastructure hosting has become a strategic priority for many organizations in 2024.

Two risks are driving this increased focus. The first is technical debt, which IT departments must manage constantly, weighing the costs of keeping systems up to date against the many risks associated with falling behind. Modern organizations favour hybrid and cloud models for their scalability and efficiency, but making the transition is costly and time-consuming.

Recently, the changes that came out of Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware underscored a second risk: vendor lock-in. For years, VMware has been synonymous with virtualization, allowing enterprises to use hardware more efficiently by dividing resources into multiple virtual machines. Now, price hikes, sunsetting of perpetual licensing, and service level changes for VMware customers have become a catalyst for many to start down the path of rethinking their infrastructure hosting. These organizations are exploring ways to manage the risk of future price increases by becoming less reliant on a single vendor or model. The modern hybrid and cloud infrastructures already mentioned offer a way to get there. 

Although infrastructure decisions are exceptionally complex, with many factors to consider, there are options for enterprises that are ready to manage their technical debt and vendor lock-in. Let’s explore how these organizations can manage these risks with on-premise, hybrid, and cloud native infrastructures:

Traditional and cloud virtualization

Before we look at other infrastructure hosting models, it’s important to note that traditional on-premise workloads and virtualization are here to stay. There are many use cases, architecture requirements, and policies that call for on-prem workloads. Virtualization is an important part of that equation.

In some cases, however, it makes sense to move virtualized workloads to the cloud or to a co-location, hybrid environment, leveraging existing investments. This is a great first step for organizations working towards hybrid or cloud native infrastructure hosting. Virtualization plays a critical role here, too.

There are two main vendors for enterprises who need traditional and cloud virtualization.

VMware – As the leader and first mover in this space, VMware offers trusted, enterprise-grade virtualization. After all, VMware has become an industry standard for good reasons. By staying with VMware, enterprises avoid costly migrations and the surprises that come along with them.

Nutanix – For enterprises who choose to diversify their virtualization or who would like to explore other options, Nutanix is the leading alternative. With its mature, enterprise-grade Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV), Nutanix’ on-premise and cloud virtualization solutions are VMware’s closest competitor.

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For budget conscious organizations, Proxmox offers a different approach:

Proxmox – Proxmox provides an open-source, self-managed virtualization platform. With a comprehensive set of features, it’s an attractive option for workloads that are less critical and organizations with smaller budgets. Support subscriptions are also available for enterprise customers, along with self-help community resources.

Hybrid

Hybrid infrastructures represent the middle-ground alternative for enterprises looking to modernize and reduce their reliance on virtualization platforms. Flexibility is the leading benefit of this infrastructure model, allowing IT departments to distribute workloads across on-premise and cloud environments and mix and match solutions.

With an automated provisioning layer that selects the optimal hosting for workloads based on a pre-defined and prescriptive set of rules, organizations can make hybrid provisioning efficient. Automation is also a key tool and enabler for migrating workloads from existing on-premise storage to the cloud, and between virtualization solutions.

Organizations have a wide range of options when it comes to hybrid infrastructures, giving them a lot of flexibility in managing tech debt and the vendor lock-in.

On-premise VMware and cloud – For organizations running critical workloads on-premise, integrating cloud for backups and disaster recovery is a viable option. The main advantage of this model is that it avoids the disruptions to critical workloads that come with migration. At the same time, it allows them to begin integrating cloud infrastructure. 

Red Hat OpenShift – Enterprises that are ready to make the leap to the cloud but must continue to virtualize can look to Red Hat OpenShift. With this platform, they can modernize while preserving their virtualization investments either by integrating their on-premise hardware into a hybrid infrastructure or migrating their VMs to the cloud with the built-in Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization feature. The platform allows these workloads to run seamlessly alongside modern containerized and serverless ones.

Pairing Red Hat OpenShift with IBM Cloud Pak for Applications adds another advantage to the platform, enabling organizations to modernize existing applications and develop new cloud-native ones using containerization.

Azure Stack HCI – A Microsoft offering, Azure Stack HCI is another option for enterprises who want to run their existing virtualized workloads along with containerized and serverless ones. For enterprises in the Microsoft ecosystem, it brings everything together, making it possible for IT departments to manage it all using the Windows Admin Center.

Google Cloud - Google’s hybrid cloud offering is feature-rich, allowing organizations to create and run virtual machines with Compute Engine along with Kubernetes applications on Google Kubernetes Engine. Google Anthos simplifies managing and deploying applications in a hybrid cloud environment. For organizations who prefer the Google ecosystem and open-source commitment, Google Cloud Platform is worth exploring.

AWS Outposts – With AWS Outposts, Amazon offers a different approach to hybrid environments. By extending the AWS cloud infrastructure onto an organization’s on-premise servers, Outposts ensures consistent hybrid experience across on-prem and cloud. A fully managed service, it simplifies the management of a hybrid set-up. Enterprises can choose to run VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts or AWS native. Again, giving them the tools to reduce their reliance on virtualization.

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Cloud native

While it might not be right for every organization, a cloud native infrastructure offers significant advantages. For starters, it enables access for distributed teams. It also improves scalability, security, availability, and efficiency.

As enterprises move to this infrastructure, they tend to move away from monolithic applications to containerized ones, since containers are more portable and resource-efficient than VMs.

Breaking monolithic applications into microservices that are built in lightweight containers, containerization allows IT teams to update specific services without making changes to entire applications. It also enables developers to build and deploy applications faster, packaging together code with all the configuration files, libraries, and dependencies they need to run.

There are a lot of options for enterprises that are ready to move away from traditional infrastructures and virtual machines to cloud native containerization. With comparable public cloud platforms, each of the major cloud providers excels in a different area:

Cloud platforms

Amazon Web Services (AWS) - With the most mature public cloud offering on the list, Amazon Web Services has a global reach and unmatched scalability. It also has a broad and robust service offering that supports building and deploying sophisticated applications and workloads. For enterprises that need a reliable global presence that can be scaled efficiently, AWS offers the best option. 

Azure - Developed by Microsoft, Azure is a public cloud computing platform that offers Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. Flexible and reliable, Azure makes it possible to bring analytics, virtual computing, storage, and networking into one platform to supplement or replace on-premise servers. With a tight focus on security, Azure is the right choice for enterprises in industries that require strict compliance.

Google Cloud Platform- The third largest cloud provider in the world, Google Cloud Platform offers services similar to Azure. With a high-performance global network infrastructure, Google’s public cloud offering is optimized for low latency, making it a great choice for enterprises that require high-speed data transfers. It’s also a great choice for organizations that prioritize data analytics and machine learning, given Google’s reputation with data management and analytics. 

Red Hat OpenStack Platform – Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSP) provides a foundation for enterprises to build their public or private clouds on, using an Infrastructure-as-a-Service model. With RHOSP, they can create, deploy, and scale cloud-enabled workloads in a reliable and secure environment. An enterprise-grade open-source solution, RHOSP can be customized with many modular services, making it a flexible option that’s compatible with containerized and virtualized workloads.

Ready to rethink your infrastructure?

Whether you’re managing technical debt or vendor lock-in, rethinking your infrastructure is a pivotal step in future-proofing your organization’s IT. However, shouldn't be taken lightly, since migrations are a heavy lift for IT departments and failed ones can be costly. In a recent article, McKinsey estimated that approximated $100 billion of wasted cloud migration spend is expected over the next three years.   

If starting down the path to modernizing your infrastructure and reducing vendor lock-in seems overwhelming, MOBIA is here to help with a consultative, vendor-agnostic approach. Choosing the right infrastructure will depend on many factors, including your organization’s requirements when it comes to storage, application workloads, and backups, to name a few. We consider all this along with your current state, budget, timelines, and team structure to create a roadmap to modernization that’s aligned with your business objectives.

Ready to rethink your infrastructure? Get in touch.

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