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In this episode of the Expedient podcast, AJ Kuftic and CEO Bryan Smith discuss the significant changes in VMware licensing due to Broadcom's new policies and their impact on edge computing. Smith explains the reduction from over 4000 VMware SKUs to fewer bundles, highlighting the shift towards subscription models and its implications for edge locations, which require minimized resources. They explore alternatives to VMware, considering other hypervisors that could integrate without increasing costs. The conversation also covers Expedient's strategic response as a pinnacle service provider, ensuring clients can manage and scale their resources effectively amidst these transitions. This episode is a critical listen for IT leaders facing the challenges of adapting edge computing strategies in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
Creators & Guests
Host
AJ Kuftic
AJ Kuftic is Principal Product Strategist for Expedient. AJ has over 15 years of experience as a customer and partner helping end users build solutions that are sustainable and easy to manage. Having knowledge across various silos of IT infrastructure gives AJ a unique perspective of the pain points and what customers are looking to improve. When AJ isn’t thinking about the next big thing, he spends his time with his wife and 2 children trying to bake the perfect loaf of bread.
What is Expedient: The Podcast?
"Expedient: The Podcast" is your gateway to the inner workings of technology and innovation, presented with unparalleled clarity and expertise. Each episode is an invitation to join the luminaries of Expedient along with special guests from the forefront of the tech industry. We delve into the latest advancements in cloud computing, the evolution of data centers, cybersecurity trends, and groundbreaking developments in AI and machine learning. This podcast strips away the complexity of the technology landscape, offering listeners an exclusive look at the real stories of challenge and triumph, innovation and leadership, that are driving our digital future.
But we don't just stop at presenting groundbreaking ideas; "Expedient: The Podcast" is about building a community. It's for the IT professionals charting their course through the ever-changing cloud environment, and for the tech aficionados keen on decoding the future of digital infrastructure. Our episodes provide the essential insights and perspectives to keep you at the forefront of a world in constant transformation.
Tune in to "Expedient: The Podcast" for a deep dive into the technologies and ideas propelling us towards tomorrow. Experience the journey through the eyes and voices of those shaping our technological landscape, all presented with the authenticity, insight, and forward-thinking Expedient is celebrated for. This is not just a podcast; it's your insider's look into the technologies transforming our lives.
00:05:09:24 - 00:05:38:01
Unknown
Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's session on edge. And the changes coming with Broadcom and VMware. Today with me is our CEO Brian Smith Brian thanks for joining me today. Thanks Ajit. Appreciate you joining. We wanted to talk about edge and remote locations and how this change from Broadcom coming down affects those end locations. And I think to start let's kind of talk through the changes that have actually happened with Broadcom and the changes that they're making to the VMware licensing.
00:05:38:01 - 00:06:00:09
Unknown
So what changes are we seeing there and what are what are clients actually getting now. Sure. The biggest changes really in both packaging and how the go to market works for VMware. So on the packaging side, VMware used to have over 4000 different individual SKUs that were packaged into 100 different bundles, and they've really reduced that down to less than five individual bundles.
00:06:00:11 - 00:06:22:07
Unknown
And for a service provider, it's really one bundle with a handful of add ons that they can tie together. And the goal of this is to have a package that has all the different technologies available so that a client can choose what they're using, but really have one integrated system where they can make one decision of using a service provider, not using a service provider, and having access to that unified stack.
00:06:22:09 - 00:06:45:28
Unknown
And then the second piece really is how they're selling that. So in enterprise, they also had to make those same decisions on what different VMware services they were buying. But it was generally buying a perpetual license within a month. Their arms are annual, maintenance fees that go with that. And they're switching everything to a subscription basis where you're doing a three year or five year subscription for licensing.
00:06:46:01 - 00:07:08:05
Unknown
And I think, how does that really play into edge? Because edge is not necessarily designed the same way that you would design things inside of a data center. Right? You don't have big, you know, heavy cores inside of a single socket. You're trying to build kind of as bare bones as possible. So how does that licensing model change the way that you would look at an edge location?
00:07:08:08 - 00:07:31:09
Unknown
Yeah. For edge specifically there's a couple different components that have an impact. One is do you want redundancy or not? and this is something people struggle with edge. So do they have a single server? Do they have multiple servers? And with the licensing change it has a minimum of 16 cores. So if you have a single, edge host then it's a minimum of 16 cores, no matter if it has eight in it or not.
00:07:31:14 - 00:07:59:03
Unknown
And then if you're doing redundant servers, that same thing would apply. So it starts to become an exponential multiplier effect. when you think of those edge locations trying to minimize compute, decide if they want redundancy or not, that the licensing aspect for VMware becomes a larger total cost, compared to the percent that it was previously. And even then, I think the other part is the when you're designing for edge, you're trying to keep that as barebones as possible.
00:07:59:03 - 00:08:25:19
Unknown
I'm just trying to run some VMs at this edge location, like a manufacturing or retail location where it's not necessary to have all of the additional bells and whistles that you would have in a data center around automation or software defined networking or software defined storage. So how much is that playing into a cost increase? On the edge side, are you really though that because I would completely challenge everything you just said there.
00:08:25:21 - 00:08:58:17
Unknown
Okay. Because, you know, if you want to have internal storage in a device, you're not having three tier storage. So having that software defined storage makes a lot of sense. Do you want to manage every individual site independently, or would you benefit being able to manage from an entire fleet where you roll out one set of updates, you have one set of networking, you have one set of patching, you have one set of security that goes everywhere, and you have those all tied together running it really as a fleet versus I think the way that most people have run their environments is lots of individual locations, and that's one of the challenges that they've had
00:08:58:17 - 00:09:27:04
Unknown
in managing that. And it's the last frontier for cloud, because they've tried to get to a cloud operating model for the rest of their business, but they've still left edge. Just as its own thing sitting out there. And does that sort of fit into the way that, you know, businesses look at that total cost of ownership to of like, okay, it's some hosts that I run out there and I'm trying to keep the licensing as low as possible, but they're not necessarily considering all of the other components and people time that go along with that.
00:09:27:07 - 00:09:46:10
Unknown
I think that any time there's change, obviously there's a lot of emotion that's involved in this because there's a price change that's happening, there's a packaging change happening, so it's forcing you to make decisions at a time frame that you may not have been ready to. So you can think about it as an opportunity as well. And you step back and say, what is the ideal type of environment that I should have?
00:09:46:17 - 00:10:05:08
Unknown
And if I'm going to make changes, can I make changes that give me better uptime? They give me better management, they give me better visibility and better operations. And you can decide if it's going to remain in a VMware environment or to be an alternate environment as well. So how do those alternate hypervisors sort of play into that discussion?
00:10:05:08 - 00:10:24:27
Unknown
Because kind of in that emotional state, you're saying, well, I don't want to they're taking my, you know, old licensing away. They're giving me this new thing that has a lot more in it, but it's also way more than I want to pay at this remote location or in this sort of remote fleet. How does an alternate hypervisor sort of play into that scenario?
00:10:24:29 - 00:10:52:08
Unknown
Well, it's going to depend on how it's consumed as well. If it's sold per core, it's going to be very similar. So then you have to look about the ecosystem. And do they does your alternate hypervisor support the backup technology, the networking technology, the observability platforms natively that you already have or is it self-contained? Because, you know, those are different options that are out there, but it's also a situation where a service provider often has different licensing than what's available to an enterprise.
00:10:52:08 - 00:11:20:12
Unknown
So, for example, experience, we have the ability to do edge computing and do in our expedient edge pod and actually do licensing per virtual machine, on that. So it can be a significant reduction versus if you were doing multiple different, cores and especially then you can have the decision to have redundancy versus not having redundancy, and it really doesn't have a change in cost to you because you're paying by the individual machine, because that's one of the big differences on edge versus normal.
00:11:20:12 - 00:11:41:28
Unknown
Central computing is your utilization on the hardware is generally much lower than what you'd have in a central production environment, right. Because you're running 5 to 8 VMs, but you still need to have two physical host to redundancy, so you're not filling it to 80 or 90%, you're running it at 40 or 50% and trying to keep, you know, to optimize the hardware for that solution.
00:11:42:00 - 00:12:06:05
Unknown
Do we see clients seeing a huge shift when they look at their edge workloads of, you know, I, I want to maybe take, you know, put a little bit more on the internet egress from those locations. And maybe I do pull it back to a central location. Or do we still see clients saying, no, I definitely still need to keep this at this edge location, and how do I optimize the cost going forward from there?
00:12:06:07 - 00:12:28:00
Unknown
Sure, the people that we work with edge generally always have to have it there because they're environments that if the network connectivity goes down, they need to keep have the ability to continue operating their business. So you think of manufacturing, you think of health care, you think of retail, all those type of environments that if the technology isn't available, they're just out of business until it comes back online.
00:12:28:00 - 00:12:49:03
Unknown
So those type of workloads, I think our target for edge, for things that are just running at a remote location, because that's just what they did. But it wasn't actually dependent, on that specific location and having the computing there. Those are things that they should look at moving into a central type of environment. And so what sort of options do we sort of offer for clients in that space?
00:12:49:03 - 00:13:13:23
Unknown
You know, we have we've had our existing edge platform, which we actually have here, sliding into frame where it's one very small box, but we can run dozens of workloads off of this. We even have clients who run multiples of these at a single site for manufacturing purposes. So how does that fit into the overall ecosystem and hypervisor decision?
00:13:14:00 - 00:13:36:01
Unknown
Do we have to change that hardware or now? Yeah, we're able to use the exact same hardware. So our edge pod that we deploy can actually do over 100, virtual machines on it or could run containers on it. And it's a blade environment where everything's hyper converged. And the hardware was originally designed for the military, so it's ruggedized hardware that can deal with lots of different, temperature environments, vibration, you know, types of dust.
00:13:36:03 - 00:13:56:04
Unknown
So it was really important when we selected, this it's actually something that's certified both for VMware and Nutanix so that we had optionality going into the design. And for either one, and depending on what your load is on there and what your utilization is on the on the host, what may drive your decision on which hypervisor you're using.
00:13:56:04 - 00:14:20:05
Unknown
So for example, if you're high utilization then it's really of what technology platform you prefer. Is it VMware versus Nutanix. Because there's not going to be a massive difference. on cost if you're at high utilization, if you're really low utilization, Nutanix is going to be probably a preferred option because, experience able to do a per virtual machine, type of billing, model.
00:14:20:07 - 00:14:58:24
Unknown
And I think that's this is where our experience comes into play of we help you not just provide some hardware and some licensing. And it's up to you to figure this all out. It's also on us to help you figure out what is the best option and help you optimize those costs. So I think that's the key difference between trying to figure this all out yourself and having somebody like Expedia, where we've optimized our costs inside of our data centers, where we've been able to pass on an average of, a 5% change in VMware licensing costs for our multi-tenant environments, and really keep those costs down for clients because we've optimized our workloads all
00:14:58:24 - 00:15:24:04
Unknown
the way forward. So, you know, we see that optimization also playing forward into the edge environments where we help figure out, like what is that best option. Absolutely. You know, one of the core beliefs inside of expedient is if we give, clients and prospects easy access to high quality data, they can make better decisions overall. So, you know, a couple of things that we have related to edge is we have tooling that can ingest your current environment, understand what's there.
00:15:24:10 - 00:15:46:01
Unknown
And then we've written software that is an edge seismic that will go site by site and tell us, you know, what's the amount of hardware that should be there. And then we can look at the hypervisor side, to make suggestions from there. So for example, somebody that was using edge previously on VMware. And if they said the cost was the change in cost was too much for them, you know, we could move that over to Nutanix.
00:15:46:01 - 00:16:04:15
Unknown
And they're not going to have a difference in cost there. And depending on, you know, what they're looking at, go forward. There may be other options for deployment. But we look to optimize everything in the stack at the edge and to the central data center and beyond. Just that cost side, a lot of the value is the curation of the different technologies into one solution.
00:16:04:15 - 00:16:23:16
Unknown
Because, you know, we have a lot of conversations with clients about you can make lots of different decisions in your environment because it's kind of like, where'd you get where'd you buy your last car, bought a, car dealership, okay. And not a AutoZone or Advance Auto Parts? No, it turns out they don't have this. They it's not I mean, they they have them.
00:16:23:20 - 00:16:42:23
Unknown
You just have to put it together yourself. And that's how most it is driven that you made lots of different decisions of which backup platform, which operating system, which hardware, which sand. And those are different decisions that then have impact all the way through versus when you're looking at a service provider, you're making that one decision on essentially availability.
00:16:42:23 - 00:17:04:11
Unknown
You're purchasing uptime and availability, and then all the other pieces are around that service level agreement that the provider has to do so when changes happen inside, like a VMware or other technology platforms, we make the adjustments and continue to provide the service to you. And I think that's a key thing that we've heard from a lot of our clients, is they didn't have to go figure this all out.
00:17:04:13 - 00:17:38:10
Unknown
We figured it out. We have had literally a dozen people working on how do we optimize, what is the impact, what are the changes we need to make, how do we make sure that our clients don't see a huge cost impact? And that includes our edge platform. And I think the key difference of building it all yourself and doing it all yourself versus leveraging that service provider, is the ability to get decision making at scale, where you don't have to focus on all of these individual components like, I don't really care that the muffler is this particular brand or that particular brand.
00:17:38:10 - 00:17:56:02
Unknown
I care that it's on the car and that it's doing what it's supposed to do as part of the car. So do we see, you know, our, our clients making certain decisions and kind of what are those decision points that they're getting to when they're looking at these at these edge platforms is it, you know, the technology stack?
00:17:56:02 - 00:18:13:07
Unknown
Is it just based on raw emotion? And I don't want to go with this company that just changed my licensing costs. Or is it something else that this is now sort of being the accelerant on top of? I think it's more the accelerant, because I think you have the raw emotion, especially if you're talking about the VMware.
00:18:13:07 - 00:18:33:29
Unknown
Broadcom changes specifically because they have the biggest impact on an edge environment, because if you have a redundant and a primary server, you're paying for at least 32 cores at a minimum, even if you may have only been using the effectively of eight or less. So, you know, there's a significant not just a cost increase, but also from the number of cores that you're, being built for.
00:18:34:06 - 00:18:50:20
Unknown
So you get that initial reaction of, I want to understand what other alternatives are. And then you need to kind of follow that chain of decision down to say, well, what's the impact? Do my people know how to run something alternate, you know, can I does this have to reside on premises? And what's the lifespan of my current hardware?
00:18:50:23 - 00:19:16:16
Unknown
So there's lots of things that you start to factor into the decision process. And but it's interesting a lot of the edge things, the running of the system is a different decision than the owning and refreshing hardware, and those are often different groups inside edge computing. So you do also have an option to unify these together to that single source that is doing all future upgrades, all the future changes, on one unified platform.
00:19:16:22 - 00:19:38:17
Unknown
And I think that really comes back to what we've heard from our clients, is the decision makers at the top are concerned about cost. They're concerned about the financial impact versus the people who are the admins, the engineers who are worried more about like, okay, well, we can switch to this alternative platform, but I'm gonna have to go relearn everything.
00:19:38:19 - 00:19:54:23
Unknown
You know, I think that plays into it. And I think that's a key differentiator where we can come in and help the select take that, where they don't have to instantly learn it all at once. We already know it. So here's how we can help you get to where you want to go faster and assist along the way when you need help.
00:19:54:26 - 00:20:16:26
Unknown
As part of the Broadcom changes there's also been changes to our partnership right. And I know that they you know the eliminated the original VMware programs. They brought a new Broadcom program. So where does experience fit into the new Broadcom partner ecosystem. Yes. This is definitely one of the biggest changes in the partner go to market. So previously VMware had over 4500 service providers.
00:20:16:26 - 00:20:37:29
Unknown
So on cloud service providers around the globe. And with the change that's been, drastically reduced and, expanding, it is one of 12 pinnacle level service providers in the US. So, you know, we're we're companies that are certified on the platforms that, you know, we've been doing it for well over a decade. We know how to utilize the technology as well.
00:20:38:06 - 00:20:59:06
Unknown
So the client knows what the experience they're going to have. And also, we're that pinnacle Group is also a team that's able to go to market with VMware sales teams so that a end user could work with our existing sales team, look at different options, understand what it looks like. in the in the VMware ecosystem and getting that consistent experience across different providers.
00:20:59:09 - 00:21:19:22
Unknown
And I think that becomes very interesting when we talk through, you know, go to market where clients can bring their own licensing, their own ELR licensing, and if their ELR is isn't up for another two years, they can come on to our edge platform with that exact same licensing where they get the benefits, but they don't have to take any sort of increased costs.
00:21:19:22 - 00:21:42:05
Unknown
They can continue to leverage their existing investments. You know, how does that overall fit in? When we start talking about the edge to centralized data center to Dr.. How does that pinnacle partnership sort of play into that? I think it's all about that getting the clients environment to that cloud operating model. And so your points are really good about that transition because they can leverage as a pinnacle partner.
00:21:42:05 - 00:22:12:16
Unknown
They can leverage their existing LA, run it on our hardware running at their premises. And then as that expires, we're able to leverage our licensing and put it, onto that. And as a pinnacle partner, we also have the ability to adjust licensing along the way so that we can have a certain amount of licensing that's committed. But then also, for example, if they were doing things that disaster recovery or doing things in the core data center, we can scale and grow those, you know, over time and, do consumption based licensing as needed.
00:22:12:18 - 00:22:33:19
Unknown
And I think that's really where the flexibility comes in, because the best pricing that you can get as an individual client is going to be if you do a three year commit, which means you need to know what you're going to be in three years, you need to know where you're going to be. And anything that you go above, beyond that is going to be a much higher cost.
00:22:33:22 - 00:22:54:22
Unknown
I think this is where working with a service provider really comes in and allows you that flexibility they previously you wouldn't have had with the existing VMware licensing or going forward, the ability to kind of grow and shrink and get to that cloud operating model they're looking for. How does edge kind of play into that cloud operating model, though, from a licensing standpoint?
00:22:54:25 - 00:23:15:29
Unknown
Sure. I want to go back to something you said that, okay, that you said the best pricing they get is that they do a three year commit. The best pricing an end user gets is that they do a five year commit and prepay for five years. And so the difference of working with a service provider as a pinnacle provider or pinnacle tier, we have the highest discount percentage of any, service provider.
00:23:16:04 - 00:23:36:02
Unknown
So we're passing that on to the client. And so we have a lower cost of operations that gets passed on to the client as well. But then it's all monthly billing, you know, with the service provider. Versus if they want that maximum discount, they would have to do prepayment. So just I think that's an important clarification. That's very, very important to say, hey, you don't have to put the entire amount out upfront.
00:23:36:09 - 00:23:57:19
Unknown
We're able to provide that commitment level pricing, but without the actual, you know, huge long term commitment to this particular number, you can sort of grow into it. And I think that's where, again, that model comes down the edge. When we provide that at the edge, it's the same. It's the same concept. It's the same sort of commitment level.
00:23:57:21 - 00:24:20:23
Unknown
in the clients, it's the same experience. Honestly, that if they're getting, our enterprise cloud in our data center or out of the edge, it's really the same service. And depending on what their needs are, we're going to help make decisions on which hypervisor it should be so we can give them options. That's completely consumption based. We can do options that have a commitment level that we're licensing the entire cores that are available.
00:24:20:23 - 00:24:39:05
Unknown
So you know, we do have those options as a service provider by having also different options from hypervisors along the way. And we could have a different edge than what you may have at your central core production environment. And I think that's the sort of flexibility that we're able to provide and really bring it together as a whole.
00:24:39:05 - 00:25:02:29
Unknown
Solution versus this is the thing I do at a remote site. This is the thing I do in my data center. The edge team is different from the data center team, and trying to navigate and balance all of those changes at a cloud CIO or director level is really hard because there's so many different decision points. I think working with and expedient is where they can really gain a ton of efficiency of just, hey, let them figure it out.
00:25:02:29 - 00:25:23:26
Unknown
This is what they do, right? We work with food service companies. We work with retail companies. It's that their job is to sell stuff. Their job is to make food. Our job is technology. And I think that curation of the technologies, stacks and of the way that you can consume those is huge for organizations that want to take advantage of that scale.
00:25:23:29 - 00:25:50:13
Unknown
when we start to dive into that from a support standpoint as well, we we talked about how there's the main Big Cloud Foundation bundle. Is there another bundle that clients potentially have access to, but how does that fit into their overall? You know, sort of if they want to run things that are remote location, sure. That VMware has a second bundle that's available that's designed more for the SMB small business, type of environment called DVF.
00:25:50:15 - 00:26:13:19
Unknown
So the big difference is between the BCF that we would be leveraging and VCF are one, it wouldn't support any type of, automation that you may have done in VA. you wouldn't have the software defined networking with NSX and probably one of the biggest for, for people, especially at edge locations, is you don't have 24 by seven and support, for those on a day to day, type of operation.
00:26:13:19 - 00:26:35:13
Unknown
So there may be instances that you're figuring pieces out or that you're waiting until the next business day, which, you know, it doesn't really always work for those type of environment. Yeah. And especially something like retail where they're doing the majority of their business on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. If you have a problem on Saturday and you can't get help until Monday, that's a big deal.
00:26:35:19 - 00:26:59:26
Unknown
And I think then it increases the cost because you're making a decision based on, a support contract or a support timeline. And is that value proposition worth it? Whereas leveraging expedient, we're able to bring that in. We're available 24 by seven to be able to help you with your problems, especially on something like a Saturday for a retail organization and get back up and running without this huge jump in cost.
00:26:59:29 - 00:27:17:25
Unknown
Absolutely. When I think of what is expedient in the core value, you mentioned the word curation before. It's really the curation of all the technologies together. And we're simplifying in the initial implementation, but also the data operations and delivering a business outcome. And that's the service you're buying from experience. So you're not worrying is this a VMware issue?
00:27:17:25 - 00:27:43:04
Unknown
Is this an HP issues this whatever technology it's really that we're responsible deliver 100% availability. And so you're buying the quantity of resources with a certain availability. And we take care of all the other pieces in between. Yeah. And I think that sort of finger pointing, I think people who have been those sorts of support calls where, you know, VMware saying it's not our problem, it's it's a hardware problem in the hardware and the hardware vendors are our problem.
00:27:43:04 - 00:28:05:24
Unknown
It's a VMware problem. You get that lovely finger pointing. It's on us to figure out where the problem actually is, right? And tracking it all the way down and leveraging our expertise to actually go do that. I think that is another key point to really where that value lies of we can help get through and cut through the noise to actually get to both.
00:28:05:27 - 00:28:39:00
Unknown
The solution to a business problem, but also the solution to technical issues when they happen. so for our edge platform, where can clients learn more? Can they come to us? Can they set up meeting? How do we how do we keep going there? Yeah, the easiest is definitely having a conversation because we can give you easy access to the tooling to assess your current environment, you know, run it through our edge sizer and give you options so you can understand, know based on where you're at on your enterprise agreement with VMware, where you're at on your hardware lifecycle, all these different, components.
00:28:39:06 - 00:28:58:13
Unknown
And we can make it easy to set up a meeting and have a deep conversation. Well, Brian, I appreciate your time. we're going to go now to live Q&A. where you can ask your questions and get them answered by me or Brian. and we'll see you then.
00:28:58:15 - 00:29:16:28
Unknown
Hello, everyone. I want to thank you for joining us for the live Q&A portion here. with me is Anthony Jackman, who's our VP of Strategy and innovation. Anthony, thank you for joining me. Great to be here. I want to go through we got some questions in the registration that we're going to go through. If you have any questions please enter them and we'll try to get them answered.
00:29:17:00 - 00:29:35:26
Unknown
as best we can. I want to start with, one that came in was how does this compare to Dell's, VCs rail and other hyper on premises, hyper converged infrastructure. And I think this is a fairly common question that we get when we talk with clients about what are the kind of key comparisons there? really, we're quite comparable from a hardware perspective.
00:29:36:03 - 00:30:00:14
Unknown
You know, VCs rail is a management layer on top of the VMware stack with vSAN to try to make it a little bit easier to administer. our differences, you know, we don't really require that, that extra layer of software because we have an entire team that is built to operate this platform. and from a client perspective of consuming our service, that's something that they don't even have to think about because we are taking on that day to day management of the platform itself, keeping the lights on.
00:30:00:17 - 00:30:24:25
Unknown
doing great fix on it. So, you know, from a hardware standpoint, fairly comparable, I would say that we are a much more, consumable, high touch service. And it's effectively you're trading that software management layer for a people management layer. Correct. So this kind of plays into it is how does this actually help me support, existing workloads on, on my aging hardware?
00:30:24:26 - 00:30:49:21
Unknown
How does that sort of play in there? So, this is where the magic button of our service delivery team comes in. Yes. we are experts at migration. We've done many very, very large scale migrations. And when it comes to edge sites become even more difficult because often, these locations don't have much staff. that has the time or even sometimes the skill set to migrate to a new platform.
00:30:49:24 - 00:31:07:13
Unknown
Our delivery team are experts at this, and, we have a lot of experience doing it with expedient edge, including live migration. So we have some clients that operate workloads that they deem absolutely critical to their business. They don't want them going down for one minute. The cost, the money. Sure, they could plan an outage if they needed to.
00:31:07:15 - 00:31:24:10
Unknown
but our view was if we can keep them running 24 seven, that's what we prefer to do. And we have done that in production. So we've landed new edge gear at a client site, networked at in with their existing system, and then planned a live migration of workloads on to the new platform, effectively transitioning them to an as a service model.
00:31:24:17 - 00:31:44:04
Unknown
Live no downtime, very low touch from their own team. I think that's from an aging hardware standpoint. This is a great opportunity to say, hey, I don't want to manage hardware anymore. I just want to take advantage of a service and a team that can actually help through that. And I think that's really the value proposition is less about it's not a thing that manages existing hardware.
00:31:44:04 - 00:32:01:20
Unknown
It's a hardware service that actually replaces that hardware and allows you to, you know, get better equipment in the door, but also not have to deal with a huge CapEx upfront as well. Absolutely. And also not having to deal with a replacement schedule, especially our clients that have more sites, you know, they start the project to replace them.
00:32:01:26 - 00:32:20:17
Unknown
Yes. And, you know, they start with the first one. And by the time they get to the last one, it's time to refresh the first one again, because it can be quite burdensome for them. We can knock out all those sites very quickly and also not add on to the workload that they have, because the other problem there is that they're in that cycle from first site to last site, and then right back to the first one.
00:32:20:17 - 00:32:43:23
Unknown
It's also all of the other things that are pulling them in eight different directions while they're trying to do all those upgrades. So we can kind of dedicate that workforce towards that. there's a question here about what pricing advantages does expedient have relative to someone purchasing their own licensing. And I think the big one there, as Brian mentioned, was that we can sign a longer term agreement to pass the savings on to you.
00:32:43:26 - 00:33:09:12
Unknown
Right? We have the ability to as a overall purchase from our course. We're doing it for everyone, for all of our clients. And so we're able to do that and allow you to get effectively a month to month model without having to sign on to a long term contract to get that pricing done. The other piece there is for things like disaster recovery, where you don't pay for disaster recovery licensing until the actual disaster occurs and you've declared one.
00:33:09:15 - 00:33:30:02
Unknown
So that is something that clients and an existing model can't do. We as the pinnacle providers in the in the service provider space, we can do that. But, our clients cannot. So that's another sort of cost savings, benefit with utilizing expedient as a technical partner to to get that pricing advantage. There are some you know, what do you also see from a pricing advantage standpoint?
00:33:30:04 - 00:33:48:24
Unknown
I mean that you hit on one of the big ones, which is the ability to peel back one giant lump sum payment of 36 or even 60 months, which is what's required for maximum discount and being able to pull that back on a true month to month schedule. also, because we have a couple of hypervisor options, we can optimize our licensing and our choice of hypervisor to the client's unique workloads.
00:33:48:24 - 00:34:04:06
Unknown
So if they have a very small workload, you know, we have a platform where we can license it per VM with Nutanix, if that's a fit. some of the more dense workloads, you know, it becomes a what's the right platform choice based on that client's unique needs. And I can help to make those decisions. And it's not necessary.
00:34:04:07 - 00:34:22:16
Unknown
But then we have a utilization. We're actually having a conversation about what's the best way to do this. And not just here's what's cheapest. Absolutely. Yeah. We are always watching our clients workloads, not only for performance but also for cost optimization. And then, finally here, what alternatives does expedient offer for those of us who want to exit Broadcom and VMware?
00:34:22:16 - 00:34:40:09
Unknown
And you started to touch on that for a moment with Nutanix. But let's kind of dive a little bit deeper I'm on the Nutanix side there. What are we seeing for HP at the edge. And kind of where does that where's the real advantage there. So one of the unique ones is licensing right from a licensing standpoint we can do per VM for those really small sites.
00:34:40:09 - 00:34:56:21
Unknown
We have a couple clients with mission critical edge sites, high value but very small number of workloads like and how many how many are in there. Think five or less VMs okay. For some of these sites, you know it's in in even in that case there's 1 or 2 that are kind of support VMs and 1 or 2 that are really critical.
00:34:56:21 - 00:35:20:23
Unknown
It can never go down. And we have a really cost effective way of licensing that. And more importantly, it is at the same service level as the VMware platform. Of course, it's different. Operate it slightly differently. but from a performance availability, reliability standpoint, it's at the same level. And I think that's that's kind of the key thing there is that we don't want to we're not necessarily tied into one specific area or another.
00:35:20:23 - 00:35:36:07
Unknown
Right. We can give you that choice, help you figure out what is the right choice and kind of walk you through. These are the options. Here's how they would work. But I think the other services that go around them, though is also a key thing there from a from an alternatives like we can back it up the same way we can.
00:35:36:07 - 00:35:52:28
Unknown
Dr.. We can do Docker. We can do operating system management. We can do our security tooling, but it's the same across either platform. So for us it's down to client requirement and not necessarily hey this service works with this service and this service works with this other service. And you have to make a decision. It's much simpler than that.
00:35:53:02 - 00:36:17:13
Unknown
Absolutely. With both platforms, our goal is to deliver 100% availability with a central point of management and a unified way of doing all operations. So that's what our focus is, and we do that with both platforms. I mean, how how do we not in there? I want to thank everyone for joining. if you want to learn more, you can go to Expedia.com and go through our edge platform, documentation there and take a look at what we're offering.
00:36:17:14 - 00:36:34:00
Unknown
You can also scan the QR code that's right here on the screen to schedule your strategy session today and help you figure out how to best handle your edge workloads along with any of your other production, Docker and disaster recovery needs. And with that, I will thank all of you and we will see you next time. Thanks, everybody.