After having performed an elaborate study to find a worthy platform to succeed our existing Broadcom/VMware environment, Vates VMS (Virtualization Management Stack), a solution built with enterprise and business-critical environments in mind, has been confirmed as the clear winner.
What primarily distinguished Vates from other contenders was its clear design for MSP and CSP environments, where reliability and scalability are essential.
However, many important factors were taken into consideration:
It's very important that our current and future hardware stack is supported by the new setup.
Many other alternative solutions require a complete revamping of our hardware platform.
By eliminating the need for a hardware refresh, Vates allows Cloud2be to accelerate migration timelines, minimize risk, and maintain stable costs for our clients
Broadcom's acquisition of VMware introduced abrupt licensing changes that caught enterprises off guard. Different surveys show that VMware customers are considering or using alternative platforms due to concerns over price hikes and licensing changes. Vates, as a focused, independent company, poses far lower acquisition or pivot risk.
For both our Cloud2be and on-premises customers, 24/7 support SLAs are essential.
Many other alternative solutions do not fulfill these basic needs.
One of the biggest challenges of certain solutions that we analyzed was third party support.
As Cloud2be has backup-related SLAs to uphold for its customers, we require a solution that is supported by our main backup vendors.
Sovereignity: Being a French company, Vates offers an advantage when taking European Digital Sovereignty into consideration.
Legal Jurisdiction: Located in France, Vates is not subject to U.S. laws like the Cloud Act or certain FISA warrants that can compel U.S. companies to provide data or access to foreign governments.
Infrastructure Agnostic: It works on almost any x86 hardware, preventing "hardware lock-in."
In-House Management: All management, backup, and orchestration tools are hosted locally in our Cloud2be DCs.
Limit Black Boxes: Vates VMS, consisting of the XCP-ng hypervisor and Xen Orchestra management layer, is 100% open source. Every line of code is freely available allowing everyone to ensure that there are no backdoors or hidden telemetry.
Since Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, the hypervisor landscape has shifted dramatically, characterized by substantial price hikes and significantly more restrictive licensing terms.
Compounding this challenge, the sudden, near-doubling of hardware costs in the current market makes it imperative that we remain vigilant in managing our overhead to protect our end customers from price volatility.
Unlike the new VMware model, which charges "per CPU core", punishing companies that invest in modern, high-density hardware, Vates charges per host and offers a more attractive flat price policy.
The following organisations are already trusting Vates VMS components to run in their environments, underlining the reliability, flexibility and maturity of Vates Open Virtualization StackSome examples:
While VMware has maintained market dominance for nearly twenty years, the landscape is shifting. Although emerging alternatives are still maturing, the development gap is closing rapidly as these platforms undergo aggressive innovation to reach feature parity.
By integrating the Vates Virtualization Management Stack built around XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra into our core infrastructure, we are significantly strengthening our capabilities as a Cloud and Managed Service Provider.
Nevertheless, although the new Cloud2be platform is being built on top of Vates VMS, this does not mean it will be the sole platform that we support in the future.
For customers used to the Self Service Portal of Broadcom (Cloud Director), this product will be replaced in the coming year.
We have focused first on building the new foundations and we will be running a proof of concept of our new Self Service Portal in the coming months.
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| Dirk Slechten Executive System Engineer |
Sven Haenen Project Manager |
Founded in France, Vates develops open-source virtualization technologies designed for enterprise and cloud environments. Its flagship products, XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra, provide organizations with a complete virtualization and management platform backed by professional support services. Today, Vates solutions are used by enterprises, managed service providers, educational institutions, and public sector organizations across the globe.
More info on vates.tech