HMO saves $1.1M with GDT for VMware-to-Hyper-V migration and gains a foundation for modernization
Summary
A major U.S. HMO wanted clarity on whether to proceed with renewal or migrate VMware workloads to a new platform. With GDT for assessment, recommendation, and eventual migration with managed services, the company saved over $1M in costs and created an effective cloud foundation for stronger disaster recovery.
Customer overview
As an HMO insurance and healthcare provider with 40 locations including clinics, offices, and a pharmacy, our customer depends on virtualization for effective operations. With an upcoming VMware renewal looming, the company sought clarity around renewal and migration options, with a goal to avoid committing to a costly multi-year contract without having first explored alternatives for reducing costs and contract complexity.
The challenge
Following the Broadcom acquisition of VMware — and related renewal and licensing changes — our client primarily wanted to compare and assess VMware renewal costs versus migration alternatives. Although unable to obtain the pricing details needed for concrete budget planning, costs for the proposed VMware renewal were estimated around $2.3M over three years — a high price to continue with existing virtualization sans modernization.
Key challenges included:
- Licensing changes, a base-product increase, add-ons, and tiering complexity resulting in virtualization costs of approximately $2.3M over 3 years
- Prior data center consolidation that left the HMO without a second environment for disaster recovery (DR)
- Hesitation to move production services to a new and unfamiliar platform
The solution: Platform modernization including assessment, VMware migration, managed services, and a DR cloud foundation
Following a virtualization assessment and a maturity assessment, GDT delivered a VMware-to-Microsoft Hyper-V migration for approximately 370 servers. The migration, took just over two months and was performed outside business hours to eliminate downtime.
To ensure total operational support for a new platform, the customer also purchased GDT managed services, with GDT teams monitoring uptime and capacity and performing recurring environment patching while internal teams learn the ropes.
This engagement also included an Azure DR landing zone foundation and Illumio services for network security within the Hyper-V stack. This provides a path toward an additional recovery environment in the future and keeps the customer within its Microsoft ecosystem, ensuring seamless future workload movement within Azure.
Key elements of the solution:
- Virtualization and maturity assessments
- VMware-to-Hyper-V virtualization migration
- GDT virtualization managed services
- Azure DR landing zone foundation
The approach
With a preexisting relationship and familiarity with our advisory-led approach, the customer trusted GDT to provide clarity and support tailored to helping the business achieve its goals.
Our team began by conducting virtualization and maturity assessments. The virtualization assessment collected performance and environment data, while the maturity assessment included interviewing administrators and leadership to summarize the organization’s health status, maturity, options, and risks. These findings, along with our strategic recommendations, were delivered in a presentation for the CIO.
Following the presentation, the customer selected the Hyper-V migration path for its ability to modernize virtualization, ensure cloud-readiness for future movement within Azure, and, of course, reduce virtualization spend while delivering reliable performance.
Naturally, our customer had practical concerns around moving to an unfamiliar virtualization platform. Thanks to GDT’s existing relationship, technical expertise, and ability to staff the migration, leadership gained the confidence that migration would be executed successfully and supported effectively as internal teams were upskilled.
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The results
Based on the difference in VMware renewal costs and all-up GDT-led modernization including services, the customer is saving $1.1M over three years in virtualization costs. The migration was completed at a 100% success rate with no impact to the business, and with GDT managed services for support, the customer can focus on upskilling internally
while maintaining a high level of performance.
Additionally, the Azure DR landing zone foundation positions the organization to effectively strengthen cloud-based DR in the future, reducing overall business risk.
Key results include:
$1.1M saved on 3-year virtualization costs
370+ servers successfully migrated with a 100% success rate
Zero-downtime migration resulting in no business impact
A cloud-ready path for future migration in Azure
The foundations for a future DR environment
GDT virtualization assessment
Whether you’re looking to optimize your VMware investments or considering migration to a new solution for virtualization, GDT can help you make the best decision for your business. Our advisory-led services and expert technical support enable our customers to modernize infrastructure and improve operations while building a solid foundation for future transformation without interruption to the business.
When you’re ready to get your virtualization modernization underway, contact our team to schedule your assessment.
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