When our clients first embraced the fantastic virtualisation benefits of VMware, little did we know they could be inadvertently setting up a stumbling block to the next optimal IT environment: the cloud.

Almost every IT organisation in Australia has either already migrated or is in the process of trying to transition to the cloud. Motivations differ, but most of our clients are driven to migrate by the promise of improved agility, a lower total cost of ownership or accelerated innovation using cloud-native development and automation technology.

And moving to the cloud clearly pays off. Recent research discovered a new group of companies that leapfrogged ahead during 2020 by compressing their digital transformation, outpacing their peers by 4x revenue growth. Notably, 98% of them had adopted some form of cloud technology.

But companies with on-premise VMware tend to be at the back of the cloud migration pack. Because, until recently, for many of our clients the business case simply didn’t stack up. The cost, time and effort required nearly always outweighed the benefits – at least over the short term.

The problem was VMware to cloud was not a straightforward migration, requiring component changes in between the platforms – which added complexity and took time. Trust me. We know.

But now a recent Microsoft Azure service release has extended the ability to use the same VMware ecosystem both on premise and in the cloud, thus providing a simplified migration pathway with common tooling.

We recently piloted these Azure VMware services with a major Australian client and the difference is night and day. The migration was incredibly straight forward. Far less complex and way cheaper to execute. In fact, we migrated 400 VMware servers in about half the time it used to take.

So, my strong advice is this: if you’ve been putting off migrating your VMware virtual applications to the cloud because of the complexity and concerns around costs, have another look at your migration business case.

There’s never been a better time for VMware to cloud migration – especially if you’re running Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2. As I’m sure you’re painfully aware, these operating systems reached the end of their support lifecycle on January 14, 2020.

But now there’s good news. If you migrate existing Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 workloads as-is to Azure VMs, you automatically receive three years of extended security updates at no additional charge, avoiding significant potential costs for patches and end of life support.

So that will see you safely out to 2023, giving you heaps of time to upgrade.

In short, it’s time to revisit your VMware cloud migration. With the new Azure release, the business case is looking far more healthy. You’ll soon be able to take advantage of built-in continuity, speed and scale while still being able to leverage your existing VMware investments, skills and tools.

Learn more about what the cloud can do for your business and why driving business value from the Azure cloud is a necessity.