From VMware to open source

Cut infrastructure costs with an open-source private cloud

April 2023

Contents
Executive Summary 2
Key takeaways 2

Challenges with proprietary infrastructure 3

Economics 3
Vendor lock-in 3
Technical 3

VMware: an established player undergoing a big change 4

The advantages of open-source infrastructure 5

Feature parity 5
Cost-effectiveness 6
Future-proofing through flexibility and innovation 6
Scalability and modularity 6

Why choose Canonical infrastructure? 7

First choice OS across platforms 7
Maximise security and compliance with Ubuntu Pro 8
Accelerate innovation with managed infrastructure 8

Migrating to Canonical infrastructure 9

Conclusion 10

More resources 10
 Executive Summary
With the pending acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, many enterprises now find
themselves re-evaluating their IT infrastructure strategies. This makes it an ideal
time to consider open-source alternatives that offer a lower TCO and help avoid
vendor lock-in, two of the most common issues with proprietary software.

If an enterprise commits to a proprietary ecosystem, layers of interdependent

services and lengthy contractual obligations make leaving immensely challenging.
Even when more advanced and better value solutions become available,
organisations using proprietary software often lack the flexibility to take
advantage of them.

In light of these shortcomings, it is no surprise that businesses are increasingly

shifting to open source. Even though adopting open-source solutions comes with
a modernisation cost, the investment pays off in the long term thanks to the lack
of expensive licences. This enables organisations to rein in costs while gaining
significantly more control over their infrastructure.

At the same time, open-source solutions unlock an array of additional strategic

and technical advantages over proprietary options. These include higher flexibility,
advances in innovation, a more scalable and modular approach to building an
infrastructure, and more.

This paper takes a closer look at IT infrastructure challenges, explores how

these problems can be overcome with open-source technologies, and examines
the benefits of Canonical infrastructure solutions. However, it does not cover
migration. For more information on how to plan and execute a migration, refer
to our webinar.

Key takeaways
• VMware is a dominant infrastructure player, but VMware software is not without
its challenges.

• Open source is a reasonable alternative to VMware software, ensuring TCO

reduction and no vendor lock-in.

• Ubuntu is the world’s leading open source integration platform, providing access
to thousands of packages.

• Canonical provides all necessary building blocks to run fully functional cloud
infrastructure on Ubuntu.

• Canonical provides commercial services to support VMware customers on their

migration path to open source.

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 Challenges with proprietary infrastructure
Proprietary solutions have traditionally dominated the IT market, but these
products have largely failed to keep pace with the evolving requirements of
modern businesses. The weaknesses of proprietary solutions can be clearly seen
across economics, flexibility, and technical capabilities.

Economics
Proprietary infrastructure solutions tend to be available out-of-the-box, but
that accessibility comes at a high cost – both up-front and in the long-term.
Initially, businesses must buy the hardware, the software, and pay for solution
deployment. Following this set-up, there are ongoing operational costs and
expensive licence fees.

Furthermore, licences and support subscriptions are often priced on a per-CPU

basis, leading to rapidly escalating costs when using servers with multiple CPUs.
Certain proprietary solutions also require special-purpose hardware, which is
typically more expensive than commodity hardware.

Despite a maturing market, with higher customer expectations and more options to
choose from, traditional industry leaders have yet to adapt and costs remain high.

Vendor lock-in
Following the substantial initial investment in proprietary IT infrastructure, it is
often easy to add other solutions from that same vendor on top. For instance,
VMware offers vSphere, ESXi, VDS, vSAN, and more to support the full scope of
virtualisation, storage, and management.

While utilising multiple tools from the same proprietary provider can be
convenient and offer a frictionless user experience, it also leads to increasing
reliance on that vendor. The more tools an organisation uses, the harder it is to
replace them.

The problem is further compounded by complex contractual obligations.

Proprietary vendors frequently offer reduced costs as incentives for customers
to bundle solutions together and agree to longer time commitments. These
packages only deepen the vendor lock-in, making it difficult for businesses to
change one element of their infrastructure without impacting another.

This lack of flexibility prevents users from pivoting to more cost-effective

solutions, or taking advantage of new innovations that proprietary vendors are
often slow to implement. Ultimately, organisations will face the decision of either
continuing to use the proprietary solutions in spite of their high cost, or going
through the challenging process of breaking out of the lock-in.

Technical
Alongside the strategic challenges detailed above, proprietary infrastructure also
comes with technical limitations. For example, users commonly find themselves
unable to quickly troubleshoot and diagnose issues, or fix problems themselves.
Given the high complexity and closed nature of proprietary environments, trying
to track down the cause for a given problem can take considerable time and effort
– and sometimes it’s not possible at all.
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 VMware: an established player undergoing
a big change
VMware is the biggest player in the virtualisation space, with approximately 60-
70 percent market share in the hypervisor and server virtualisation sector, and
nearly 40 percent market share in hyper-converged infrastructure .1 Countless
enterprises around the world rely on VMware for their mission-critical workloads
– which is why so many organisations are concerned by the news of VMware’s
acquisition by semiconductor giant Broadcom.

In a survey of more than 300 VMware customers following the acquisition

announcement, 451 Research found that 40 percent of respondents felt
negatively about the deal.2 Despite assurances from Broadcom that it does not
intend to raise prices on VMware products,3 customers are sceptical given that
following previous acquisitions, such as CA Technologies and Symantec, Broadcom
has increased prices, reduced investment in innovation, and cut back on support.

Should these fears prove accurate, the existing issues of cost, flexibility, and
innovation will be further exacerbated for VMware customers. As such, there is a
compelling argument for considering alternative solutions.

As already discussed, other proprietary options come with the same challenges as
VMware, which is why enterprises looking to break the cycle of vendor lock-in and
escalating costs should consider adopting open source.

1 https://blogs.vmware.com/virtualblocks/2022/04/15/vmware-leads-hci-market-q4-2021-according-to-idc/

2 https://www.networkworld.com/article/3674590/broadcoms-vmware-acquisition-sparks-concern.html

3 https://www.broadcom.com/blog/what-a-combined-broadcom-and-vmware-can-deliver

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 The advantages of open-source infrastructure
The IT landscape has come a long way from the days when open source was
avoided due to lack of enterprise support or security. Today, open-source
infrastructure represents a reliable, trustworthy, and highly cost-effective option.
In fact, 89 percent of IT leaders consider enterprise open-source solutions to be as
secure or more secure than proprietary software.4

However, organisations considering a move from proprietary solutions, like those

offered by VMware, to an open-source stack will likely wonder if feature parity can
be achieved.

Feature parity
VMware capabilities go beyond just virtualisation. VMware delivers all the
necessary software to run a hypervisor or a cluster of hypervisors. It provides
solutions to configure networks and storage in virtualised environments, it
includes containerisation and observability stacks, it enables automated power
management, and much more.

In most cases, equivalents of each of these solutions are available in the open
source space too, as depicted in Fig. 1, offering the same or better capabilities
without the proprietary price tag. As a result, organisations planning a migration
from VMware or other proprietary software to open source can be confident that
their new platform will deliver feature parity with their existing ecosystem.

Native feature/open source equivalent VMware Ubuntu

VMware vSphere

VMware ESXi

VMware NSX

VMware VDS

VMware vSAN

VMware Tanzu

VMware DRS

VMware vRealize Log insight

Fig. 1. Feature comparison between VMware and Canonical infrastructure solutions

Astute leaders may also wonder if using open source will result in a higher TCO
over time, given the need for infrastructure modernisation.

4 https://www.redhat.com/en/resources/state-of-enterprise-open-source-report-2022

5
 Cost-effectiveness
Open source does not require expensive licences, enabling significant long-term
cost savings over proprietary solutions. Enterprise design and delivery services
and commercial support still incur costs, but these tend to be significantly lower
than equivalent services from proprietary vendors. Additionally, when using
open-source solutions, there is no need for costly special-purpose hardware which
decreases the TCO even further.

VMware Canonical

No mandatory subscription required

Fixed-price design & delivery service

Support subscription charged per-host

Managed services

Fig. 2. Cost conditions comparison between VMware and Canonical infrastructure solutions

Future-proofing through flexibility and innovation

Since open-source software is developed by an entire community, users are not
reliant on a single vendor. The open source approach leads to a much faster pace
of development, meaning that businesses can quickly take advantage of the latest
technologies and capabilities without being blocked by a slow proprietary vendor.

Users of open-source software can also freely adopt new solutions without
worrying about contractual obligations and bundled products. If a more cost-
effective or advanced solution becomes available, switching over is substantially
less painful than it would be if using proprietary technology, enabling businesses
to stay at the cutting edge.

But what about interoperability between various open-source infrastructure

components?

Scalability and modularity

With open source, an organisation can quickly start small with community versions,
test the different alternatives to find the best option for its specific use cases,
then scale up with a commercially supported solution if and when the business
requires it.

Given that open-source software is developed in a collaborative manner,

integration and interoperability between various solutions is usually high. Even
when tools are developed by different communities, it is often easy for enterprises
to deploy a modular solution tailored to their unique requirements.

The advantages of open source are clear, but its landscape is vast, and choosing
and maintaining solutions is easier said than done. This is where Ubuntu comes in.
Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution published by Canonical.

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 Why choose Canonical infrastructure?
Building IT infrastructure with open source involves bringing together an array
of different solutions for virtualisation, containerisation, cloud computing,
networking, storage, and more. These solutions are often hosted across different
repositories and written in different languages, raising an entry barrier.

Ubuntu solves this problem, serving as an open source aggregation platform.

Ubuntu provides streamlined access to tens of thousands of open-source software
packages. After deploying Ubuntu, organisations can easily install and configure all
of the open-source software components they require. There is no need to compile
or worry about software dependencies and libraries, it is all done automatically.
Moreover, the most complex infrastructure solutions are underpinned by total
bottom-up automation for fast delivery and smooth operations.

In this way, Ubuntu empowers enterprises with all the necessary building blocks
to deploy an open-source hypervisor, lightweight virtualisation platform or a
fully functional cloud environment, mirroring the convenience of a proprietary
ecosystem while delivering the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of open source.
Users easily combine various solutions for each component of the infrastructure
stack to create a tailored ecosystem that meets or exceeds the capabilities of
proprietary products for a fraction of the price.

Ubuntu offers a pipeline to the entire landscape of open source, but that is not the
only advantage of Canonical infrastructure.

First choice OS across platforms

Ubuntu is the operating system (OS) of choice for countless users and businesses
around the world, and for a good reason.

First and foremost, Ubuntu is 100 percent open-source and always will be. There
is no risk of vendor lock-in, and there are no mandatory licence fees. Additionally,
Ubuntu is an enterprise-grade Linux designed with security at its core. Canonical
is committed to delivering ten years of security maintenance for each Ubuntu LTS
release under Ubuntu Pro subscription, bringing an unparalleled level of reliability
to the open source space. Moreover, the most demanding customers can opt for
24/7 commercial support and fully-managed services.

Ubuntu’s massive community adoption feeds directly into its success, and vice
versa. As the world’s most popular Linux distribution, the number of people
running Ubuntu on their workstation, using it in production environments and
contributing to its development is constantly growing.

When it comes to infrastructure, Ubuntu gives organisations access to cutting

edge technology through Canonical’s partnerships with leading silicon
manufacturers, OEMs, public cloud providers and ISVs, including VMware. This
ensures that Ubuntu can support new hardware and software features as soon as
they become available.

Finally, Ubuntu can be used across the entire enterprise IT estate. Modern
businesses do not run their applications all in one place. Rather, workloads
are spread across private clouds, public clouds, and even micro clouds and IoT
devices running at the edge. Ubuntu works on all of these platforms, delivering a
frictionless, consistent experience wherever workloads are located.

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 Public Cloud Private Cloud Micro Cloud Internet of Things

Fig 3. Ubuntu coverage.

Maximise security and compliance with Ubuntu Pro

Building on these powerful capabilities and advantages even further, the most
demanding users can also leverage the optional Ubuntu Pro subscription. Ubuntu
Pro is a commercial service available on top of Ubuntu LTS that enhances security
and compliance to meet the most exacting enterprise use cases.

With Ubuntu Pro, Canonical not only delivers 10 years of expanded security
maintenance for each Ubuntu LTS release, but also expands security coverage
beyond the base operating system to a wider open source ecosystem of 28,000
packages. This comprehensive coverage enables businesses to take advantage of
the best that open source has to offer – such as Ansible, Docker, Apache Kafka,
Puppet, and many, many more – with full confidence that Canonical will take care
of any high and critical CVEs that arise.

Ubuntu Pro also provides additional hardening and compliance capabilities to

support businesses operating in highly regulated sectors such as healthcare and
federal government. Ubuntu Pro is FedRAMP and HIPAA-compliant, includes FIPS
140-2 certified crypto modules, and features hardening according to CIS and DISA-
STIG benchmarks.

Businesses that decide to migrate from VMware to public clouds can also take
full advantage of Ubuntu Pro. Ubuntu images are natively available on all leading
hyperscale platforms, including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle
Cloud, and IBM Cloud. These images include both the standard Ubuntu LTS
optimised for use in the public cloud, as well as Ubuntu Pro to maximise security
for enterprise workloads. Ubuntu Pro on public clouds is priced on a pay-as-you-go
basis, ensuring a cloud-native experience.

Accelerate innovation with managed infrastructure

Deloitte reports that the average business spends over 55 percent of its
technology budget on operating the infrastructure layer and dependencies,
leaving a much smaller portion of the budget for what matters most – the
strategic and business application layers.5

5 https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/insights/us/articles/6300_CIO-insider-tech-finance/DI_CIO-
Insider_Tech-Finance-Budgets.pdf

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 For organisations that want to move fast and focus on innovation rather than
operations, or avoid having to fill an internal skill shortage, Canonical offers a fully
managed infrastructure service. This enables customers to offload the infrastructure
management workload and enjoy a hands-off, public cloud-like experience.

Canonical builds private clouds, operates them 24/7 with full transparency, and
then optionally hands over the keys if and when the customer is ready to take
over, with no hidden costs. On top of that, Canonical also provides all the required
training and support to help customers upskill and develop an expert team that
can confidently run their own infrastructure.

Migrating to Canonical infrastructure

To help businesses navigate the migration journey 4. Migration - If the new infrastructure is replacing
from VMware to open source, Canonical has an existing platform, such as VMware, Canonical
developed a structured methodology for delivering will assess the workloads that need to be
streamlined deployment and migration tailored migrated and design a migration path, supporting
to the needs of each organisation. The process integrations.
spans design, delivery, enablement, support, and
even operations. 5. Training and enablement - With the new
infrastructure in place, Canonical delivers
The key steps are as follows: instructor-led training to help upskill internal
teams to make the most of open-source software.
1. Assessment - Canonical analyses the customer’s
current state and existing IT ecosystem, and builds The specifics of each migration depends heavily on
an understanding of its goals on both the business the workloads involved and the organisation’s goals.
and technical levels. The process can be as simple as a lift-and-shift, or it
can be an opportunity to redesign workloads to align
2. Solution design - Canonical identifies with a modern, cloud-native strategy. Whichever
dependencies and hardware requirements that approach an enterprise chooses, Canonical provides
will enable the business to achieve its goals the required expertise.
and optimise its infrastructure. Next the team
designs the solution, helping the customer Looking beyond the deployment and migration, day
choose solutions tailored to its needs, while two operations are among the largest challenges
ensuring that it fully understands the TCO and facing CIOs. Following successful infrastructure
ROI of the deployment. implementation, Canonical offers ongoing support
through Ubuntu Pro and fully-managed services as
3. Deployment - Canonical deploys the solution detailed above.
and handles the planning, project management,
engineering, and documentation work.

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 Conclusion
Providing feature parity and significantly reduced costs with no risk of vendor lock-
in, it is evident that open-source solutions are a viable and compelling alternative
to traditional, proprietary IT infrastructure.

Part of the beauty of open source lies in the immense breadth of options available.
But on the other hand, deploying and maintaining a disparate set of open-
source tools to enterprise standards can be challenging. Canonical infrastructure
represents the best way to bridge this gap and facilitate open source consumption
at the enterprise level.

Meanwhile, Canonical’s commercial services offer additional support to streamline

the path to open source adoption, and provide all the capabilities needed to
satisfy the most exacting enterprise use cases.

More resources
To learn more about Canonical infrastructure, get in touch.

To learn more about how you can migrate to Ubuntu based

infrastructure, watch our webinar.

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