Day Two Cloud 122: Two Customer Journeys To VMware Cloud (Sponsored)

Ethan Banks and Ned Bellavance hosted a panel discussion at VMworld 2021 with two VMware customers using VMware Cloud. This discussion looks at what works, where the customers ran into issues, and how their cloud journeys are progressing. Our guests are Mari Lovo, Director, IT, Cloud Infrastructure Services at University of Miami; and Vesko Pehlivanov, Senior Managing Director, Security and Technology Services, Solution Strategy and Architecture at Sterling National Bank. Mari says approximately 30% of her workload is in the cloud, primarily on Azure. Vesko says Sterling National Bank has fully migrated its operations to the cloud, with a mix of workloads running in VMware Cloud and cloud-native applications. We discuss: * The primary drivers when deciding whether to place an application in VMware Cloud or use the native public cloud constructs. * The main factors in deciding to leverage a major public cloud to run VMware Cloud as opposed to hosting yourself or running in a colo. * How they decided which public cloud to use for VMware Cloud Thinking about the time since you adopted VMware Cloud, what’s one big benefit you’ve discovered and one surprising challenge? * The long-term strategy with VMware Cloud –  Is it a transitional technology to public cloud, a steady-state deployment for specific applications, or a growing portion of your IT infrastructure? Show Links: VMware Cloud Mari Lovo on LinkedIn Vesko Pehlivanov on LinkedIn Transcript: [00:00:05.450] – Ethan Welcome to Day Two Cloud. And today we’ve got kind of a very special edition. Ned and I were invited to host a panel discussion at VMworld 2021, and we did an interview with a couple of folks who are using VMware cloud services as a way to move them along their cloud journey. And we got right into an interesting discussion, didn’t we? [00:00:27.590] – Ned We sure did. And it was an authentic discussion because these are customers who are currently using the solution, and sometimes it was awesome. And sometimes they ran into some issues. So it was really cool to hear how they’re using it and how their cloud journey has progressed. [00:00:42.830] – Ethan Yeah. And you say authentic because it was VMware. Let us have a real discussion where it was a bit of a warts and all conversation. Some elements were really great for these folks, and some things were less great. And we got into some of those details with VMware’s blessing, which was really nice. So enjoy this VMware panel discussion. [00:01:02.510] – Ethan We’re going to step right into it. And you’re going to hear who the guests are and their backgrounds right about now. [00:01:08.570] – Roger Mari Lovo is the director of IT Cloud Infrastructure Services over at the University of Miami, Florida, and Vesko Pehlivanov, he is the senior managing director, solution, strategy and architecture at Sterling National Bank. And away we go. So go ahead, Ethan, over to you. [00:01:28.130] – Ethan Hi, everyone. Welcome to the panel here. I am Ethan Banks, cohost of the Day Two Cloud Podcast with Ned Bellavance. You can find out more about that at Day Two cloud dot IO.