78% of VM migrations realize payback in one year or less

Enterprises are interested in moving to the cloud to increase agility in a world where everyone is remote while simultaneously reducing the burden of operating costs.  The question is how can they transition to the cloud efficiently without incurring more costs, operational burden and service interruptions while delivering improved experiences to their customers?  And, what apps do they move and how do they even get started?  

Google Cloud VMware Engine helps simplify your migration to Google Cloud.  The service provides a dedicated software defined data center (SDDC) that allows you to continue to use the core VMware applications you need to run your business in the cloud, without changes to your tools, processes or policies.  In a recent survey by IDC, they found that 78% of businesses realize payback in one year or less after they migrate. However, the transition isn’t a simple undertaking and without the right plans, or services, the process is unlikely to be smooth. Before starting your move, it can be helpful to seek advice from an experienced expert. And what’s better than one expert? Hundreds of them.

IDC recently surveyed 204 US-based enterprise senior IT and DevOps decision-makers with experience in successfully migrating existing on-premises VMs to public clouds. We’ve pulled out a few highlights from the report to help you identify some common challenges and expected benefits of migration. Or, if you’re ready to dive right in, read the full IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Google Cloud and VMware: Strategies for Successful Migration to Public Clouds.(Doc. #US48321221, October 2021)

Why migrate?

While cost is always an important factor, migration programs are typically motivated by much more than just infrastructure savings. When the surveyed experts were asked what business and IT goals are motivating the decision to migrate, the top three answers were:

1. Improving overall business resiliency with access to scalable, on-demand public cloud infrastructure (53%)

2. Accelerating application modernization (51%)

3. Gaining faster access to innovation delivered as cloud services (50%)

Considerations and challenges

When migrating, there are factors that can slow or prevent implementation. According to surveyed decision makers, the top 3 dependencies for app performance are: 

1. Security and compliance audits 

2. Compatibility issues with VM format and runtime environments between on-premises and public cloud

3. API and connector dependencies not migrating well 

Similarly, there are risk management and change control concerns that affect the overall decision-making process. Some of the most impactful issues include:

1. Public cloud vendor ability to address cyber security threats 

2. Ability to recover data if the migration fails

3. Ensuring that public cloud infrastructure refresh cycles do not disrupt business application stability and performance

See the full list of considerations and challenges in the IDC InfoBrief.

Benefits of transitioning to public cloud

Migrating VMs to the public cloud can help you improve business resiliency, app modernization, speed, flexibility, and on-demand scalability. The investment is also often quick to pay back, making cost a major benefit to migrating. As mentioned, 78% of those surveyed realized payback in one year or less. Contributing to the fast payback and ROI calculation are areas like improved availability and performance, reduced data center costs, and simplified and unified vendor management, to name a few. You can explore all the contributing factors in the full IDC InfoBrief..

Consistent operational controls across on-premises and public cloud infrastructure maximize staff productivity and end-to-end service levels. A unified management control plane allowed respondents to seamlessly integrate workflows across locations and improve VM/cloud administration efficiency and productivity with one set of tools. 

What does the typical respondent look like?

All participants represent organizations with 1,000 or more employees with experience in implementing (79%) or evaluating (21%) migration of existing on-premises VMs to public clouds. On average, these organizations currently run more than 1,000 simultaneous VMs across both on-premises and cloud platforms. 

What’s next?

Google Cloud VMware Engine enables you to easily lift and shift your VMware-based applications to Google Cloud without changes to your apps, tools or processes. The service provides all the hardware and VMware licenses you need to run in a dedicated VMware SDDC in Google Cloud. This allows you to take advantage of the elasticity and scale of the cloud through fast provisioning, (new private cloud in about 30 min) and dynamic resource management with automated scaling. You can also transform your applications through native integrations with Google Cloud services (like BigQuery for analytics, Cloud Operations for monitoring and Actifio for DR) to respond to customer needs quickly.  Read about how you can get started with Google Cloud VMare Engine.