How the VMware Acquisition Has Affected the Public Sector

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware in 2023 has had a powerful impact on organizations across industries. In fact, a July 2024 poll found that 95% of IT decision-makers said recent changes to the virtualization landscape would be disruptive to their IT strategy. Agencies in the public sector, which must deal with regulatory and budget constraints, have been particularly affected.

One of the most significant changes to the VMware software since the acquisition has been the pricing structure. Broadcom instituted a switch from perpetual licenses to a subscription-based model that requires organizations to buy bundled products from the VMware platform rather than choosing them a la carte. For some agencies that are already using the bundled products, this doesn’t change much or raise costs greatly. However, for other organizations, the change may create a cost increase. In this new situation, agencies have to examine what makes sense for their next steps.

In some cases, it may work best for them to stay with VMware. Others may want to maintain their on-premises infrastructure while moving to another hypervisor. For many agencies, this transition period provides an excellent opportunity to migrate infrastructure and applications to the cloud.

The path agencies take to address their infrastructure and virtualization needs depends on a variety of factors. It’s important to consider where an agency is in its on-premises hardware lifecycle. If infrastructure is due for a hardware refresh, that could simplify the decision; instead of making a massive capital investment in new hardware, an agency might plan a cloud migration that allows it to pay for IT resources as a monthly operating expense. 

Workloads that are candidates for migration are another important consideration. Some workloads may be easily moved to the cloud, while others may face security or regulatory burdens, such as HIPAA. Agencies that already have workloads in a cloud environment such as Amazon Web Services may find it easier to migrate additional workloads, as they will have met requirements for the authority to operate in a cloud environment under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP). 

Moving a significant number of workloads from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud may be a challenge for some agencies, as this often requires a rethinking of processes. Strategic planning can help agencies achieve the level of transformation necessary to make a major move to the cloud.

A trusted partner can help agencies achieve success in their migrations. For example, CDW has extensive experience helping agencies with both moderate and high security requirements. We work with agencies to make sure they have the policies in place to make a smooth transition, and we help them establish change management and change control procedures. 

Many agencies must follow specific policies and procedures for their on-premises environments, but these policies don't always map directly to a cloud environment. We have years of experience in helping agencies map their policies and procedures to a cloud environment. We also handle administrative and documentation needs.

Our expertise in security is particularly important for the agencies we help with cloud migrations. The shared security model that cloud providers follow splits responsibility for security controls between organizations and providers. We make sure agencies know which areas they’re responsible for and which are covered by a provider such as AWS.

We also can help agencies map out the numerous interdependencies that may exist among their hardware and applications. In some cases, we help agency leaders move workloads from their current operating system version to one that is better supported in the cloud. Or, we can refactor and rearchitect applications so they use cloud resources more cost-effectively.

Cloud migrations sometimes present an opportunity for agencies to clean house. When we go through discovery, we usually find numerous virtual machines that are no longer in use but that may still cost the agency money. When we conduct a complete discovery, we help agencies find all of the workloads in their current environment, so they can decide what to move and what can be retired.

Ultimately, a cloud migration can provide an agency with more than a way to move beyond its legacy infrastructure on VMware; it can represent a whole new way to support the mission.