Manage on-prem and cloud workloads through a single pane of glass
Ergo is at the forefront of helping organisations straddle the old and new worlds of IT, being ready for today while planning for tomorrow, which often means having infrastructure that spans the full range of hybrid environments. Many of our clients are simultaneously running workloads in the cloud and on-premise, relying on a combination of leading-edge and more traditional technology.
The challenge comes in how you manage such a complex and diverse range of technology solutions through a single pane of glass. Obstacles are many, from finding talent that can oversee such diverse workloads to having the capacity to keep growing without adding to the administrative burden and risking operational efficiency.
Transform on-prem with cloud attributes
What we also know at Ergo from our many years on the frontline of cloud migration is that not every application can be moved. Part of it may be the monolithic architecture of legacy apps, but it’s also worth remembering that on-premise workloads have their own advantages, such as locality, low latency, performance and predictable costs.
The upshot is that on-premise infrastructure will often need to be assimilated into a hybrid environment and managed. The good news is that our partnership with VMware continues to make this easier and more effective. With its new product, vSphere+, VMware doesn’t just address the difficulties of managing workloads distributed across multiple locations, it also bridges the connectivity challenge between on-premise and cloud, thereby creating a consistent IT environment with a consolidated console view that makes it easier to run.
Another benefit is the way it gives on-premise workloads the more agile attributes of cloud. By creating an enterprise-ready Kubernetes environment, cloud services can be used to transform existing on-premises deployments into Software-as-a-Service enabled infrastructure. Not only does this help centralise management, it drives productivity and accelerates innovation, breathing new life into older workloads.
Benefits for different users
What makes vSphere+ even more compelling is that organisations can reap the benefits without having to overhaul the structure of their IT teams. Designed for easy adoption, it’s non-disruptive to the business. In fact, IT administrators and developers are the big winners because it allows them to work more effectively and add greater value to the business.
Let’s look at how:
IT administrators
VMware talks about vSphere+ ‘supercharging’ productivity and they have a point. Because the service is delivered from the cloud, there’s nothing to install with updates happening seamlessly in the background, which make it easy to run with a small team. A global inventory service lets them visualise clusters, hosts and virtual machines across the entire estate. Events, alerts and the security posture are monitored through a single pane of glass, which means problems can be triaged and resolved more quickly. Further time is saved with an ultra-fast provisioning service for new VMs and a configuration management service that will quickly identify any drift from your global standard.
One bugbear of most VMware administrators is the management of license keys. Having to split and combine these keys, and then trying to keep track of these can be a real headache. vSphere+ is a keyless experience, taking this job away from VMware administrators, reducing the operational overhead of managing a VMware estate.
Software developers
As every enterprise becomes a software company, the onus is on enabling the inhouse development team to do more. vSphere+ accelerates innovation with a range of services that lets developers provision on-premise services as easily as they would in a public cloud. And they can build in the same kind of flexibility to handle spikes in demand. Basically, it brings the benefits of VMware Cloud Services to on-premise workloads by making them part of a SaaS-enabled infrastructure.
Getting access to VMware Kubernetes Grid for run-time, and Tanzu Mission control essentials for managing multiple Kubernetes clusters, gives organisations all they need to build the foundation for a Microservices platform on-premise. Plus this solution can integrate seamlessly with Tanzu integrated services such as monitoring, networking, logging and storage services, as well as Tanzu Kubernetes grid within your chosen public cloud provider, offering choice and flexibility for modern application needs.
On-premise no longer an impediment
The good news for vSphere customers is that they can upgrade and convert existing perpetual licenses into a subscription. For first timers wrestling with the complexity of hybrid infrastructure, vSphere+ offers a tantalising solution to having one foot on premise and the other in the cloud.
With a consolidated view of the estate improving operational efficiency and SaaS-enabled infrastructure allowing DevOps services to innovate, it’s a win-win for organisations that had previously seen on-premise infrastructure as an impediment to a type of business transformation powered by cloud agility.
Here at Ergo we have specialised teams to address all your questions regarding services functionalities, operating model, to guide you through your upgrade plan or even to support you on your cross-cloud and multi-cloud strategy. Feel free to contact us and we’ll be more than happy to help!
