Boosting ROI with IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions: Study by Forrester

Get the best of both worlds: the flexibility of a cloud infrastructure and the same level of control as your on-premises environments.

In the dark ages of BC (before cloud), virtual machine (VM) environments would be run on-premise in an organization’s own data center, in a co-location or on private cloud. This could give you a sense of control, but it also saddled you with the extra headaches of running the data center. An on-prem infrastructure was not very flexible for scaling up or down and could cost a ton for the equipment, maintenance, floor space, power and cooling. And once you owned it, you owned it. With fluctuations in business, you might have too much capacity at times — or too little at others.

Many organizations consider the transformational move to hybrid cloud as a way to gain more flexibility and cut costs, but have worries that it might end up being more expensive or add another layer of complexity.

To investigate and quantify the potential benefits and challenges of moving to a hybrid cloud, IBM asked Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and determine the return on investment (ROI) enterprises might be able to realize if they deployed IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions. Interviews were conducted with several customers with years of experience using it.

The benefits you can count on

Forrester found many benefits — quantifiable (e.g., costs) and unquantifiable (e.g., performance, latency, high availability, customer satisfaction) — but we’ll just introduce a few here. The companies interviewed found that they could do the following:

• Cut data center costs: Costs were reduced by an average of 40% by year three by migrating VMware workloads to the IBM Cloud. The result was a total cost saving of over $1.3 million over three years. These cost savings included improved density and reduced over-provisioning.
• Drive greater efficiency: With IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions, the organizations reduced operations efforts by two-thirds. This streamlining included procurement, provisioning, maintenance and disaster recovery. Because they were able to keep the same management tools, they avoided large-scale training or the need to hire new staff.
• Increase productivity: Their developers were 40% more productive with access to Red Hat® OpenShift®. What other single step can you think of with that kind of boost in productivity? The organizations are now faster to market, with higher-quality releases, more frequent releases, and fewer defects.
• Reduce downtime: The organizations are improving application availability, avoiding four downtime events per year by year three. Those downtime events cost an average of $50,000, including repair costs and lost business — in an industry like financial services, that could be even more damaging.

In addition to the measured benefits listed above, Forrester also found multiple unquantified benefits and specific cost savings.

Analyzing all of these improvements working in combination, Forrester has concluded that organizations that have deployed IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions have seen a significant financial impact and increase in ROI. Direct from the study: “Forrester’s interviews with five existing customers and subsequent financial analysis found that an organization based on these interviewed organizations experiences benefits of $4.8 million over three years versus costs of $1.9 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $2.9 million and an ROI of 153%.”

Take the next step

We hope by now you want to download and read The Total Economic Impact™ of IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions study from Forrester. Get all of the details about the cost savings, flexibility, added data protection, performance and added productivity you can gain — all of which can help deliver an impressive ROI.

Once you know that IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions can make a real difference for your enterprise, have a look at what’s under the hood — how it works, a variety of use cases that help demonstrate the benefits and reviews from our customers on TrustRadius. Learn how IBM can help you, straight from the folks who are using IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions today.