What Google Cloud VMware Engine can do for you: Three customers talk TCO

The first step in many digital transformation initiatives is migrating workloads to the cloud to improve business resiliency and speed, modernize applications, and gain flexible, on-demand scale. That first step can seem daunting. But for many of our customers running VMware on premises — including ADT, LIQ, and Viant — it can actually be quite straightforward to migrate to the cloud with Google Cloud VMware Engine. 

In this blog post, we’ll look at how these three companies take advantage of Google Cloud VMware Engine to migrate their VMware-based applications to the cloud without changes to their apps, tools, or processes, while lowering their total cost of ownership. 

How VMware Engine makes migration seamless

Since we launched Google Cloud VMware Engine in 2020, we have enabled end-to-end support for customers to migrate and transform their VMware environments in Google Cloud. Google Cloud VMware Engine is a Google first-party service that delivers a fully managed, enterprise-grade VMware experience built on Google Cloud’s highly performant and scalable infrastructure. Google Cloud VMware Engine includes vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, NSX-T, HCX, and corresponding tools, so it’s fully compatible with existing processes and skills, all delivered on high-performance, dedicated infrastructure.

By enabling a consistent VMware experience, the service allows customers to adopt Google Cloud with minimal change to on-premises vSphere workloads, typically in under an hour with just a few clicks. Read on to see how customers are benefiting from the service:

ADT: Accelerating data queries and lowering opex by 76% with Google Cloud VMware Engine and BigQuery

Leading home security provider ADT chose to work with Google Cloud to streamline infrastructure sourcing and procurement and drive digital transformation. Although ADT was 97% virtualized, capacity management was always challenging, requiring large capital expenditures to deliver new services and streamline its IT environment. Starting with a new disaster recovery environment, the company has been shifting its applications to Google Cloud VMware Engine to consolidate data centers and avoid sprawl. 

The evolution has given ADT one-click simplicity for spinning up new environments, interoperability and portability between on-premises and cloud environments, reduced maintenance needs, and access to native Google Cloud services such as BigQuery. The move accelerated data query times 20-30X — from hours to seconds — through Google Cloud VMware Engine and BigQuery while reducing operating expenses for running applications by 76% annually.

“The ability to increase capacity with automated scripting, as well as private and cross-connected networks, has been a huge advantage of Google Cloud VMware Engine,” says Alex Bingham, ADT’s IT Director, Cloud Services. “Standing up a Google Cloud VMware Engine environment is extremely easy and more streamlined than I’ve seen in nearly 20 years.”

LIQ: Reducing pricing runtime by 90% with Google Cloud VMware Engine 

In 2020, customer relationship management (CRM) company LIQ sought to update its 600 servers, reduce idle processing capability, and ensure a flexible structure, independent from physical space. After researching alternatives, LIQ chose Google Cloud VMware Engine for its potential functional improvements and comprehensive support throughout the migration journey. 

“We needed to update and modernize our data center, meet new business demands in an agile, secure way, and keep our service up and running during any necessary operational changes,” says Nicolas Ramirez, Head of Technology and Innovation. “We discussed all this and, based on surveys we conducted, it became clear to us that partnering with Google would make a lot of sense.” The company began by migrating 180 servers, followed by 80% of the business application environments and 50% of its total informational environments in just three months.

In a short period of time, LIQ has seen a 60% savings in overall infrastructure costs, including a 92% reduction in storage expenses, and a 90% runtime reduction for its pricing process. Next up? Application modernization. 

Viant: Just 7 weeks to a new data center and a faster and more reliable site with Google Cloud VMware Engine

Advertising software company Viant Technology faced a potential crisis when the data center housing all of their servers was shutting down. The company had just six months to plan and execute the move of 600 virtual machines (VMs), 200+TB of data, 80+ MSSQL databases, and 100 physical servers running multiple operating systems.

Within 24 hours, Google Cloud’s Rapid Assessment & Migration Program (RAMP) provided a complete inventory from which to plan, even identifying cost and redundancy reductions. Notes Viant’s CIO Linh Chung, “The fact that this was a Google offering gave us an additional level of comfort because we had the assurance of the Google infrastructure.”

In all, Viant moved an entire data center into Google Cloud VMware Engine in seven weeks rather than the scheduled ten. Once on Google Cloud, Viant discovered that its site runs far faster and significantly more reliably. Viant no longer needs to maintain unique hardware, make manual upgrades to its VMware software, or worry about servers breaking down. And the capital expense Viant saved on migration essentially paid for a full year’s worth of usage in Google Cloud. With Google Cloud VMware Engine’s high-performance infrastructure, Viant’s user-facing sites ran faster than in their previous paradigm.

Google Cloud VMware Engine: Your onramp to digital transformation

These are just three of the many customers who have discovered how Google Cloud VMware Engine lets them easily migrate and transform VMware-based applications to Google Cloud without changes to apps, tools, or processes. If you’re running VMware environments on premises, imagine how Google Cloud VMware Engine could help you accelerate your digital transformation. Fasten your seatbelts.

To learn more, get a free migration cost estimate, and try Google Cloud VMware Engine for free, visit cloud.google.com/vmware-engine.