Enhancing Network Visibility and Continuity with VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations

VMware commissioned Forrester Consulting to interview four representatives and conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations.¹ For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences and combined the results into a single composite organization.

Since VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations has been available for over five years, this study primarily emphasizes the value and benefits of ongoing usage and upgrades rather than the advantages of an initial deployment. TEI studies cannot be directly compared across different products or years, as each study focuses on unique customer interviews and experiences. However, those interested in the TEI of an initial deployment scenario for VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations can refer to the March 2022 version.

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) offers a comprehensive platform for building and managing private or hybrid cloud environments. As part of VCF, Cloud Network Operations is a software solution that helps organizations efficiently manage and optimize their network operations. It offers network performance monitoring and analytics across organizations’ public cloud, virtual, and physical networks, and can be deployed on-premises or in a software-as-a-service (SaaS) configuration with identical features and capabilities. This improved visibility facilities activities such as application discovery, cloud migration, troubleshooting, and network segmentation planning. With VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations, organizations can reduce the manual effort required to manage and scale their network.

INVESTMENT DRIVERS

The interviewees’ organizations invested in VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations to gain end-to-end network visibility and to improve their security.

Prior to the investment, the interviewees reported that their organizations lacked a holistic view of the complex networks and their related application dependencies, which complicated efforts to prepare for large projects, including cloud migrations. The interviewees stated that they needed a platform that would provide administrators with a better view of application boundaries and dependencies, which would help them pursue cloud migrations and other business transformations.

Interviewees also shared that they had limited network monitoring and segmentation capabilities, which made it difficult to define which virtual machines (VMs) make up which application. They wanted a tool that would allow them to proactively address security concerns by automatically recommending firewall rules and staying ahead of any issues.

Key Results

The results of the investment for the interviewees’ organizations include:

• Increased network mapping efficiency by over 80%. Prior to implementing VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations, interviewees had to invest significant time in creating VM topology to understand network operations. However, with the flow mapping feature of VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations, they were able to quickly visualize network connections and reduce the time needed to create affinity diagrams, enabling proactive issue resolution and enhanced security.
• Reduced network monitoring time by over 75%. Interviewees expressed the need to monitor their networks for various reasons, including performance optimization, understanding application dependencies, security improvement, and compliance maintenance. By streamlining these monitoring activities, VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations allowed organizations to save valuable time for their network engineers and administrators.
• Decreased network outages by as much as 50%. Interviewees highlighted how VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations helped mitigate network outages. For organizations with dedicated network segments for production, even a short outage could result in significant financial losses. By improving network performance, VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations reduced the occurrence of outages, ensuring smoother operations for businesses.

• Reduced network troubleshooting time by 90%. Interviewees noted that pinpointing the source of network issues is often a significant challenge during troubleshooting. Interviewees stated that VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations facilitated quick identification of network issues, considerably reducing the time spent by network engineers in diagnosing problems and enabling faster resolutions.

Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value but are not quantified in this study include:

• Streamlined and optimized cloud migration processes. By leveraging mapping, application discovery, and a deeper understanding of their network infrastructure, interviewees' organizations successfully migrated portions of their networks to the cloud in a more intelligent and efficient manner.
• Eliminated network management silos. VMware Cloud Foundation Network Operations played a crucial role in unifying disparate IT groups within the organizations by providing visibility across various cloud environments. This platform enabled users to identify network overlaps, commonalities, and ensured equal access to network data for executives, managers, and engineers.
• Partnership with VMware. The interviewees' organizations benefitted from a collaborative relationship with VMware, which actively sought feedback, engaged in discussions about customer challenges, product capabilities, and future updates to enhance the platform's functionality.

Appendix A: Endnotes