Many enterprise IT teams are navigating major changes in response to VMware’s new licensing model, and they have to make decisions fast. Facing rising costs and uncertainty around the best alternative solutions, some organizations are choosing to reevaluate their infrastructure strategies. With this review comes an opportunity to minimize the degree to which they’re locked in with vendors and prepare for a modernized future. However, moving legacy systems to the cloud isn’t always easy.
Extra considerations such as application dependencies, networking complexity, and the rigidity of security policies can turn seemingly straightforward migrations into difficult, sprawling projects. If your teams want to avoid downtime and misconfigurations while keeping the project scope manageable, Intelliflow offers the technical power and support you need.
Intelliflow is a low-code orchestration platform that supports the entire hybrid cloud automation process, including app connectivity, network workflows, and policy enforcement. This functionality is advanced, but simple to use—meaning it can help your organization modernize quickly without disruption.
Let’s take a closer look at what’s behind the sudden shift and how hybrid cloud automation will help your team keep up.
Why the VMware Cliff Is Creating Urgency
For years, VMware has been a go-to solution for virtualization and data center infrastructure. More recently, licensing changes have clouded its future with long-term users, leaving many organizations without clarity on how to proceed. Here are some of the key factors accelerating the shift:
- Expiring licenses and rising costs: Legacy contracts are set to expire, and many teams can’t justify the new cost of renewal.
- Vendor instability: Uncertainty around the future of product roadmaps and support lifecycles means CIOs and infrastructure teams no longer think of VMware as a safe bet.
- Growing pressure to modernize: To support changing hybrid and multi-cloud environments in the future, you need flexible infrastructure that scales. Your legacy platforms often can’t match those needs.
The result? Enterprises everywhere are looking for cost-effective, future-friendly alternatives. Unfortunately, the transition isn’t as simple as “move everything to the cloud.”
The Complexity of Hybrid Cloud Migration
Cloud transformation is enticing because it promises agility and scalability while reducing overhead. However, actually executing that transformation, particularly from legacy systems, can be far more complex. Why?
- Tangled app dependencies: Enterprise applications often rely on a range of integrated configurations and legacy protocols designed for now-outdated environments.
- Custom network configurations: Your organization’s VPNs, firewalls, routing rules, and access policies need to be replicated and adapted without breaking critical connections.
- Rigid security policies: Governance requirements like role-based access, audit trails, and compliance standards will impact shifts to the cloud.
- Multi-cloud confusion: Many organizations are moving to multiple cloud providers, and each one operates with different tooling, APIs, and processes.
These challenges multiply and compound without a centralized automation strategy. You also risk the process of migration becoming a long series of manual tasks prone to error and delay. But the biggest issue arises when every environment and app team ends up establishing slightly different workflows that create long-term inconsistencies and technical debt.
Automating the Transformation With Intelliflow
Effective hybrid cloud automation can make a huge difference at this stage.
Intelliflow helps enterprise IT and infrastructure teams make the switch from legacy to hybrid or multi-cloud environments by orchestrating current or new automations based on your chosen policies. Instead of rewriting scripts or redesigning networks, you can define standardized workflows that execute those complex tasks for you with greater consistency, control, and visibility.
Here’s how Intelliflow supports hybrid cloud automation:
- Automated network setup: Prebuilt workflows configure VPNs, firewalls, and routing rules for secure app connectivity across all of your environments.
- Application mapping and migration: Legacy dependencies are mapped and preserved. This allows your team to move workloads without losing functionality.
- Access and policy orchestration: Intelliflow offers built-in role-based access controls and guardrails to prioritize security from day one.
- Cross-environment orchestration: Whether you’re working with AWS, Azure, GCP, or on-prem VMware, Intelliflow unites it all in a single orchestrated flow.
Best of all, you can reuse or adapt workflows across domains and future infrastructure changes to keep maximizing value from your automation investments.
Achieving Fast, Seamless Migrations
Wondering if you should hold off on transformation because of concerns about downtime and disruption? It’s a valid consideration, but with hybrid cloud automation, upgrading can be both controlled and predictable.
With proper hybrid cloud automation, you can:
- Avoid disruptions to operations
- Accelerate timelines from weeks to days
- Reduce cost and complexity while improving coordination across teams
These outcomes are backed up by data. Research shows that automation and orchestration can lead to a 15% increase in operational efficiency within just six months. That’s a measurable impact that your leadership team (and budget) will notice quickly.
Final Thoughts
The VMware cliff isn’t a dead end that leaves organizations stranded. For those looking ahead, it’s a chance to modernize and become more efficient. Cloud migration might now be inevitable for many, but that doesn’t mean it has to be a major challenge.
Hybrid cloud automation with Intelliflow offers the tools your team needs to make the transition seamless and the end result easier to use. By orchestrating networking, connectivity, app dependencies, and policy enforcement, Intelliflow helps you trade legacy systems for modern infrastructure without ever disrupting your business.
Ready to see how it works? Get in touch with our team to take control of your cloud transformation.
