Red Hat is temporarily promoting several migration services for VM deployments. VMware customers who wish to migrate away can take advantage of the lower fees until August 31.
The discounted services are the Virtualization Migration Assessment (GPS-OVA) and a bundle of virtualization trainings and certifications with exam DO317.
VMware is not being named, but the intent behind the initiative is clear. “The services […] are designed to assist businesses with migration planning as they look to move off of legacy virtualization providers and upskill IT teams to manage VMs using Red Hat technologies.”
Modernization
Kevin Sherry, VP of Global Services at Red Hat, also mentions that the recent turmoil in the VM market (read: Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware) is driving organizations to reevaluate their virtualization strategy. “Red Hat is actively working with our customers to advise and extend their existing Red Hat footprint to support this migration and other modernization initiatives.” Sherry looks forward to sitting down with more organizations to discuss their strategic roadmap in this area.
Migration Services
Those who take advantage of the promotion get a nice package of migration services. That starts with Red Hat’s Virtualization Migration Assessment, a set of on-site workshops that takes two weeks to complete. These workshops aim to review IT infrastructure design, identify risks and outline a plan to get Red Hat solutions operational.
Those who take advantage of this service and go on to purchase software such as Red Hat OpenShift Kubernetes Engine and the Ansible Automation Platform get the migration service practically for free. This is because customers get the cost of the assessment reimbursed through subscription credits.
Training and certifications are also available on the cheap. Until Aug. 31, the management course for VMs in Red Hat OpenShift is 70 percent cheaper than the local MSRP.
Not the only one
Where Red Hat Services is now capitalizing on the VMware price increases, others were already ahead of the IBM subsidiary. For example, Scale Computing introduces itself on its own main page as an”industry leading VMware alternative,” and Nutanix deploys big ad campaigns asking customers if they are not tired of all the VMware hullabaloo.
The message is clear: Please pull away from VMware ASAP and join us. While many customers might want that, more often than not it is not realistic. After all, VMware is mostly stuck between all kinds of business-critical services that won’t just keep working properly with a “rip & replace.
Regardless, Broadcom will be pleased with the VMware acquisition it made. Significant cost reductions are more than offsetting decreased revenue for now, an earnings call this week showed.
Read about this: VMware revenue drops by 600 million, but Broadcom is hopeful