IDC ANALYZE White Paper The business value of vmware nsX advanced load balancer. a Study of Enterprises Using Next-Generation Application Delivery ponsored by: VMware Brad Casemore Matthew Marden October 2020 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Driven by the acute imperative of digital transformation, enterprises and other organizations worldwide have adopted multicloud strategies as springboards to increase business agility and competitive differentiation. At the same time, monolithic application development has been superseded by cloud-native microservices, which entail the decomposition of previously complex applications into independent, modular processes that communicate with each other using language-agnostic APIs Unfortunately, existing application delivery infrastructure was designed for the client/server era, not for the cloud era, in which microservices are proliferating and application environments are becoming increasingly distributed across clouds. Physical application delivery controller(ADC)appliances were logical choices when there was a one-to-one relationship between applications and servers in an enterprise datacenter, but they are less tenable in cloud environments, where they often are unable to scale up and down elastically to accommodate changing application requirements and Business value highlights traffic patterns. Even the advent of virtual ADCs(VADCs)-which architecturally, are still appliances- doesn t fully address these 573% three-year challenges, failing to provide the agility flexibility, and elastic scale that are require Five months to As such, there is a need for application delivery to become more 47% Lower cost of agile, more elastic, more distributed, and more orchestrated. We operating have entered a period where aDC functionality must be recast as 52% Lower ADC application services-elastic pools of network and security services solution cost (often referred to as Layer 4-7 services) that ensure optimal 43% more efficient application deployment and that also dynamically support the ADC management availability, performance, and security of applications. Typical 97% faster to scale application services address load balancing, application capacity analytics/monitoring, application acceleration, auto-scaling 8% higher microsegmentation, and application security and also function as application service proxies and enable service discovery developer productivity October 2020. IDC #US43643418RF
October 2020, IDC #US43643418RF White Paper The Business Value of VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer: A Study of Enterprises Using Next-Generation Application Delivery Sponsored by: VMware Brad Casemore Matthew Marden October 2020 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Driven by the acute imperative of digital transformation, enterprises and other organizations worldwide have adopted multicloud strategies as springboards to increase business agility and competitive differentiation. At the same time, monolithic application development has been superseded by cloud-native microservices, which entail the decomposition of previously complex applications into independent, modular processes that communicate with each other using language-agnostic APIs. Unfortunately, existing application delivery infrastructure was designed for the client/server era, not for the cloud era, in which microservices are proliferating and application environments are becoming increasingly distributed across clouds. Physical application delivery controller (ADC) appliances were logical choices when there was a one-to-one relationship between applications and servers in an enterprise datacenter, but they are less tenable in cloud environments, where they often are unable to scale up and down elastically to accommodate changing application requirements and traffic patterns. Even the advent of virtual ADCs (vADCs) — which, architecturally, are still appliances — doesn't fully address these challenges, failing to provide the agility, flexibility, and elastic scale that are required. As such, there is a need for application delivery to become more agile, more elastic, more distributed, and more orchestrated. We have entered a period where ADC functionality must be recast as application services — elastic pools of network and security services (often referred to as Layer 4–7 services) that ensure optimal application deployment and that also dynamically support the availability, performance, and security of applications. Typical application services address load balancing, application analytics/monitoring, application acceleration, auto-scaling, microsegmentation, and application security and also function as service proxies and enable service discovery. Business Value Highlights 573% three-year ROI Five months to payback 47% lower cost of operating 52% lower ADC solution cost 43% more efficient ADC management 97% faster to scale capacity 8% higher application developer productivity
VMware's NSX Advanced Load Balancer, known as Avi vantage prior to VMware' s acquisition of Avi Networks in 2019, adapts application services to adhere to the principles of software- define networking (SDN), including the decoupling of the control plane from the data plane. Accordingly, VMware says it is in the business of providing"software-defined application services, "though we wil refer to them as application services for the remainder of this white paper IDC interviewed organizations using NSX Advanced Load Balancer to deploy application services to understand how they are using the product to support their business operations. Study participants explained that moving to NsX Advanced Load Balancer has changed how they pay for and consume application services. With NSX Advanced Load Balancer, they no longer must choose between overprovisioning and potentially having insufficient load-balancing capacity, while having virtualize application delivery resources with NSX Advanced Load Balancer ensures that their application levelopment efforts and business operations are not slowed by manual provisioning processes IDCs analysis shows that study participants are achieving significant value with NSX Advanced Load Balancer worth an annual average of $4. 11 million per organization($230, 891 per Avi Service Engine)by Reducing the cost of providing application delivery and load-balancing resources through software-defined principles and use of commodity hardware Providing real agility by sharply reducing the time needed to deliver new load-balancing capacity, thereby enabling development teams and opening up new ways of serving Supporting the business with elastic scalability and improved network performance, thus better addressing business opportunities and serving customers and internal application users SITUATION OVERVIEW Digital transformation on the 3rd Platform continues to engender sweeping change to business processes and business models. Enterprise IT must respond by ensuring that network infrastructure can support not only legacy applications that function as systems or record but also the new wave of cloud-native applications that function as systems of engagement In the context of digital transformation, these applications have gained unprecedented importance-delivering content and digital experiences, facilitating communication, enhancing employee productivity, and supporting business transactions. This change places ever-increasing pressure on the network, and those who operate it, to provide for cloud applications that are integral to digital transformation Consequently, application services are required to accommodate enterprise requirements for hybrid and multicloud application delivery, in addition to the needs occasioned by increasing mobility, data analytics, and the expansion of the Internet of Things(loT) As legacy application workloads migrate to the cloud, and as new workloads are born in the cloud ADCs and other network infrastructure dedicated to application delivery must adapt to the requirements of hybrid IT, ensuring that applications are delivered consistently, reliably, and securely, not only from on-premises datacenters and private clouds but increasingly from multiple public clouds Hence the need for a more agile, distributed, and orchestrated approach to application delivery as represented by application services nat's more, as developers and Devops teams increasingly embrace distributed, cloud-native environments predicated on containers and microservices, the demand for application services will continue to grow. That's because of the increasing pressure on network and other IT operations teams 2020|DC #US43643418RF
©2020 IDC #US43643418RF 2 VMware's NSX Advanced Load Balancer, known as Avi Vantage prior to VMware's acquisition of Avi Networks in 2019, adapts application services to adhere to the principles of software-defined networking (SDN), including the decoupling of the control plane from the data plane. Accordingly, VMware says it is in the business of providing "software-defined application services," though we will refer to them as application services for the remainder of this white paper. IDC interviewed organizations using NSX Advanced Load Balancer to deploy application services to understand how they are using the product to support their business operations. Study participants explained that moving to NSX Advanced Load Balancer has changed how they pay for and consume application services. With NSX Advanced Load Balancer, they no longer must choose between overprovisioning and potentially having insufficient load-balancing capacity, while having virtualized application delivery resources with NSX Advanced Load Balancer ensures that their application development efforts and business operations are not slowed by manual provisioning processes. IDC's analysis shows that study participants are achieving significant value with NSX Advanced Load Balancer worth an annual average of $4.11 million per organization ($230,891 per Avi Service Engine) by: ▪ Reducing the cost of providing application delivery and load-balancing resources through software-defined principles and use of commodity hardware ▪ Providing real agility by sharply reducing the time needed to deliver new load-balancing capacity, thereby enabling development teams and opening up new ways of serving customers including self-service offerings ▪ Supporting the business with elastic scalability and improved network performance, thus better addressing business opportunities and serving customers and internal application users SITUATION OVERVIEW Digital transformation on the 3rd Platform continues to engender sweeping change to business processes and business models. Enterprise IT must respond by ensuring that network infrastructure can support not only legacy applications that function as systems or record but also the new wave of cloud-native applications that function as systems of engagement. In the context of digital transformation, these applications have gained unprecedented importance — delivering content and digital experiences, facilitating communication, enhancing employee productivity, and supporting business transactions. This change places ever-increasing pressure on the network, and those who operate it, to provide for cloud applications that are integral to digital transformation. Consequently, application services are required to accommodate enterprise requirements for hybrid and multicloud application delivery, in addition to the needs occasioned by increasing mobility, data analytics, and the expansion of the Internet of Things (IoT). As legacy application workloads migrate to the cloud, and as new workloads are born in the cloud, ADCs and other network infrastructure dedicated to application delivery must adapt to the requirements of hybrid IT, ensuring that applications are delivered consistently, reliably, and securely, not only from on-premises datacenters and private clouds but increasingly from multiple public clouds. Hence the need for a more agile, distributed, and orchestrated approach to application delivery as represented by application services. What's more, as developers and DevOps teams increasingly embrace distributed, cloud-native environments predicated on containers and microservices, the demand for application services will continue to grow. That's because of the increasing pressure on network and other IT operations teams
to keep pace with advances in application architectures and cloud environments with DevOps and Cl/CD processes setting an ever-faster cadence that infrastructure must have the agility and responsiveness to support. That is why intelligent automation and self-service models are a necessity for every enterprise that relies on applications for its business success As such, application services not only align well with the requirements of multicloud, but they also offer business and operational benefits such as agility, increased productivity, and reduced capex and opex costs NSX ADVANCED LOAD BALANCER NSX Advanced Load Balancer is entirely software based, providing application services that can be deployed on bare metal, virtual machines(VMs), and containers, as well as in datacenters and NSX Advanced load balancer is clo entirely software based, providing application services The solution addresses the application delivery requirements of a that can be deployed on bare wide range of customer organizations, including(but not limited to) those in the retail, financial services, and technology sectors, and metal, virtual machines(VMs) service providers. NSX Advanced Load Balancer is particularly suited and containers as well as in to organizations that need an automated and orchestrated approach datacenters and public clouds. to application delivery, with the ability to elastically scale application services up or down dynamically based on demand As such, it enables customers to obtain optimal load-balancing capacity and other application services when needed, and then scale back down as application traffic decreases NsX Advanced Load Balancer also features REST APl-driven automation and provides application performance visibility that can aid reactive troubleshooting as well as proactive capacity planning Despite the name, NSX Advanced Load Balancer can be deployed to address application delivery challenges and deliver business value in non-VMware Despite the name, application environments, including those that do not contain VMware NSX Data Center or VMware vSphere. While NsX Advanced Load Balancer is NSX Advanced load Balancer can be ntegrated with NSX Data Center to create a complete, declaratively Load Balancer is also widely deployed without NSX, where it provides all the application delivery features and benefits discussed in this paper. challenges and deliver business value in In addition, NSX Advanced Load Balancer functions as an ingress controller non-VMware application for Kubernetes-based container environments and provides ingress services environments such as traffic management, application security, and observability for Kubernetes clusters. It also integrates with VMware's Tanzu portfolio, including the Tanzu Service Mesh, which is based on the Isto open source project, and similarly integrates with other Kubernetes-based platforms, including Red Hat Open Shift These integrations allow enterprise customers to extend cloud-native container networking and application services across traditional applications in on-premises datacenters as well as across container-based microservices 2020|DC #US43643418RF
©2020 IDC #US43643418RF 3 to keep pace with advances in application architectures and cloud environments, with DevOps and CI/CD processes setting an ever-faster cadence that infrastructure must have the agility and responsiveness to support. That is why intelligent automation and self-service models are a necessity for every enterprise that relies on applications for its business success. As such, application services not only align well with the requirements of multicloud, but they also offer business and operational benefits such as agility, increased productivity, and reduced capex and opex costs. NSX ADVANCED LOAD BALANCER NSX Advanced Load Balancer is entirely software based, providing application services that can be deployed on bare metal, virtual machines (VMs), and containers, as well as in datacenters and public clouds. The solution addresses the application delivery requirements of a wide range of customer organizations, including (but not limited to) those in the retail, financial services, and technology sectors, and service providers. NSX Advanced Load Balancer is particularly suited to organizations that need an automated and orchestrated approach to application delivery, with the ability to elastically scale application services up or down dynamically based on demand. As such, it enables customers to obtain optimal load-balancing capacity and other application services when needed, and then scale back down as application traffic decreases. NSX Advanced Load Balancer also features REST API–driven automation and provides application performance visibility that can aid reactive troubleshooting as well as proactive capacity planning. Despite the name, NSX Advanced Load Balancer can be deployed to address application delivery challenges and deliver business value in non-VMware application environments, including those that do not contain VMware NSX Data Center or VMware vSphere. While NSX Advanced Load Balancer is integrated with NSX Data Center to create a complete, declaratively managed, policy-based Layer 2–7 network virtualization fabric, NSX Advanced Load Balancer is also widely deployed without NSX, where it provides all the features and benefits discussed in this paper. In addition, NSX Advanced Load Balancer functions as an ingress controller for Kubernetes-based container environments and provides ingress services such as traffic management, application security, and observability for Kubernetes clusters. It also integrates with VMware's Tanzu portfolio, including the Tanzu Service Mesh, which is based on the Istio open source project, and similarly integrates with other Kubernetes-based platforms, including Red Hat OpenShift. These integrations allow enterprise customers to extend cloud-native container networking and application services across traditional applications in on-premises datacenters as well as across container-based microservices. NSX Advanced Load Balancer is entirely software based, providing application services that can be deployed on bare metal, virtual machines (VMs), and containers, as well as in datacenters and public clouds. Despite the name, NSX Advanced Load Balancer can be deployed to address application delivery challenges and deliver business value in non-VMware application environments
This allows NSX Advanced Load Balancer to serve as application delivery infrastructure that can address a comprehensive array of application environments, heterogeneous infrastructure, and multiple clouds. This includes the on-premises datacenter, traditional monolithic applications, cloud and multicloud use cases, container and microservices use cases, and end-user compute(EUC) requirements that involve support for virtual desktops and vDI workloads. In this latter scenario, NSX Advanced Load Balancer integrates with and provides load balancing and other application services for VMware's Horizon EUC platform As mentioned previously, NSX Advanced Load Balancer is architected on software-defined principles decoupling the data and control planes. As a result, it centrally manages and dynamically provisions pools of application services, including load balancing, across multicloud environments(including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform [GCP], VMware Cloud Foundation [vCF], and VMware Cloud on AWS [VMC]) Architecturally, NSX Advanced Load Balancer comprises three core elements: the Avi Service Engines, the Avi Controller, and the Avi Console Avi Service Engines take the form of distributed software that runs on bare metal servers, virtual machines, and containers. They implement application services across on-premises datacenters colocation datacenters, and public clouds. They also collect data relating to application performance, security, and clients. As distributed software, Avi Service Engines are capable of horizontal auto- scaling within minutes while functioning as service proxies for microservices The Avi Controller provides central control and management of the Avi Service Engines. It orchestrates policy-driven application services, monitors real-time application performance(leveraging data provided by the Avi Service Engines), and provides for predictive auto-scaling of load balancing and other application services. Furthermore, it is capable of delivering per-tenant or per-application load balancing increasingly in demand in multicloud contexts-and also facilitates troubleshooting with traffic analytics of application services, delivers visualization of network configurations and virtual IPs (IPs), anrration Finally, the Avi Console provides web-based administration and monitoring. It offers a Ul for config displays application health scores and transaction round-trip times. It's also where customers can view performance, security, and client insights, as well as where they can view service interactions THE BUSINESS VALUE OF NSX ADVANCED LOAD BALANCER Study demographics and NsX Advanced load Balancer Use IDC interviewed six organizations for this study asking a variety of quantitative and qualitative questions about the impact of deploying NSX Advanced Load Balancer on their network and IT operations, businesses, and costs. These companies ranged from large enterprises to smaller IT service providers, with an average employee base of 25, 343 and revenue of $13.09 billion per year The sample of companies involved in the study represented a good mix by geography and by vertical industry. Two companies were United States-based, with the other four based in EMEA markets Similarly, there was diversity among vertical industries represented, including financial services(2 IT services(2), software, and telecommunications. Table 1 summarizes this information along with other relevant demographic attributes 2020|DC #US43643418RF
©2020 IDC #US43643418RF 4 This allows NSX Advanced Load Balancer to serve as application delivery infrastructure that can address a comprehensive array of application environments, heterogeneous infrastructure, and multiple clouds. This includes the on-premises datacenter, traditional monolithic applications, cloud and multicloud use cases, container and microservices use cases, and end-user compute (EUC) requirements that involve support for virtual desktops and VDI workloads. In this latter scenario, NSX Advanced Load Balancer integrates with and provides load balancing and other application services for VMware's Horizon EUC platform. As mentioned previously, NSX Advanced Load Balancer is architected on software-defined principles, decoupling the data and control planes. As a result, it centrally manages and dynamically provisions pools of application services, including load balancing, across multicloud environments (including AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform [GCP], VMware Cloud Foundation [VCF], and VMware Cloud on AWS [VMC]). Architecturally, NSX Advanced Load Balancer comprises three core elements: the Avi Service Engines, the Avi Controller, and the Avi Console. Avi Service Engines take the form of distributed software that runs on bare metal servers, virtual machines, and containers. They implement application services across on-premises datacenters, colocation datacenters, and public clouds. They also collect data relating to application performance, security, and clients. As distributed software, Avi Service Engines are capable of horizontal autoscaling within minutes while functioning as service proxies for microservices. The Avi Controller provides central control and management of the Avi Service Engines. It orchestrates policy-driven application services, monitors real-time application performance (leveraging data provided by the Avi Service Engines), and provides for predictive auto-scaling of load balancing and other application services. Furthermore, it is capable of delivering per-tenant or per-application load balancing — increasingly in demand in multicloud contexts — and also facilitates troubleshooting with traffic analytics. Finally, the Avi Console provides web-based administration and monitoring. It offers a UI for configuration of application services, delivers visualization of network configurations and virtual IPs (VIPs), and displays application health scores and transaction round-trip times. It's also where customers can view performance, security, and client insights, as well as where they can view service interactions. THE BUSINESS VALUE OF NSX ADVANCED LOAD BALANCER Study Demographics and NSX Advanced Load Balancer Use IDC interviewed six organizations for this study asking a variety of quantitative and qualitative questions about the impact of deploying NSX Advanced Load Balancer on their network and IT operations, businesses, and costs. These companies ranged from large enterprises to smaller IT service providers, with an average employee base of 25,343 and revenue of $13.09 billion per year. The sample of companies involved in the study represented a good mix by geography and by vertical industry. Two companies were United States–based, with the other four based in EMEA markets. Similarly, there was diversity among vertical industries represented, including financial services (2), IT services (2), software, and telecommunications. Table 1 summarizes this information along with other relevant demographic attributes
TABLE 1 Demographics of Interviewed Organizations Number of employees 25,343 12500 Number of it staff 2.914 Number of external customers 14.5 million 5 million Number of business applications1,688 Revenue per year S13.09 billion S8. 62 billion United States(2), Lithuania, Netherlands, Switzerland, and United Kingdom Industries Financial services(2), IT services(2), software, and telecommunications Source: IDC. 2018 Interviewed organizations' criteria for choosing to deploy NsX Advanced Load Balancer for application ices focused on cost, agility, and scalability Much lower costs when compared with hardware-based approaches. One NSX Advanced Load Balancer customer noted: The key factors for us in selecting NSX Advanced The key factors for us in Load Balancer were the inflexibility of having a hardware selecting NSX Advanced Load based solution and the cost of adding hardware. The software. Balancer were the inflexibility based solution with VMware also made sense financially and of having a hardware-based that is what we were trying to address. solution and the cost of Agility and elastic scalability in terms of application delivery adding hardware. The and load-balancing capacity. According to one customer, "We software-based solution with chose NSX Advanced Load Balancer because we needed an VMware also made sense ADC platform that gave us more agility and visibility into what financially and that is what was going on using analytics. We needed something that was we were trying to address AP/ managed rather than manually operated. We also needed thing that would scale out as our Paas scales out and that was not bound by physical devices To achieve these objectives, interviewed organizations have deployed an average of 18 Avi Service Engines at 3-4 datacenters across their operations. The number of business applications supported by NSX Advanced Load Balancer averaged 507, including varied applications and projects. One organization specified that it is supporting"groundbreaking, digital applications"with NSX Advanced Load Balancer while another is creating an internal platform-as-a-service(PaaS)offering as part of a broader IT modernization initiative For the most part, these organizations are running NSX Advanced Load Balancer with on-premises virtualized environments, but two organizations have made NsX Advanced Load 2020|DC #US43643418RF
©2020 IDC #US43643418RF 5 TABLE 1 Demographics of Interviewed Organizations Average Median Number of employees 25,343 12,500 Number of IT staff 2,914 800 Number of external customers 14.5 million 5 million Number of business applications 1,688 650 Revenue per year $13.09 billion $8.62 billion Countries United States (2), Lithuania, Netherlands, Switzerland, and United Kingdom Industries Financial services (2), IT services (2), software, and telecommunications n = 6 Source: IDC, 2018 Interviewed organizations' criteria for choosing to deploy NSX Advanced Load Balancer for application services focused on cost, agility, and scalability: ▪ Much lower costs when compared with hardware-based approaches. One NSX Advanced Load Balancer customer noted: "The key factors for us in selecting NSX Advanced Load Balancer were the inflexibility of having a hardwarebased solution and the cost of adding hardware. The softwarebased solution with VMware also made sense financially and that is what we were trying to address." ▪ Agility and elastic scalability in terms of application delivery and load-balancing capacity. According to one customer, "We chose NSX Advanced Load Balancer because we needed an ADC platform that gave us more agility and visibility into what was going on using analytics. We needed something that was API managed rather than manually operated. We also needed something that would scale out as our PaaS scales out and that was not bound by physical devices." To achieve these objectives, interviewed organizations have deployed an average of 18 Avi Service Engines at 3–4 datacenters across their operations. The number of business applications supported by NSX Advanced Load Balancer averaged 507, including varied applications and projects. One organization specified that it is supporting "groundbreaking, digital applications" with NSX Advanced Load Balancer, while another is creating an internal platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering as part of a broader IT modernization initiative. For the most part, these organizations are running NSX Advanced Load Balancer with on-premises virtualized environments, but two organizations have made NSX Advanced Load "The key factors for us in selecting NSX Advanced Load Balancer were the inflexibility of having a hardware-based solution and the cost of adding hardware. The software-based solution with VMware also made sense financially and that is what we were trying to address
Balancer a core part of containerization initiatives. Almost all study participants reported using NSX dvanced Load Balancer as part of private cloud and software-defined networking initiatives, and about half of study participants deployed it to refresh their load-balancing environments( see Table 2) TABLE 2 NSX Advanced load balancer environments Average Number of datacenters 4 Number of Avi Service Engines 18 Data throughput(Gbps) 1.5 1.5 Number of business applications Source: IDC. 2018 Business value Analysis: NSX Advanced Load Balancer NSX Advanced Load Balancer customers reported leveraging its use to make their application services much more efficient and effective IDC quantifies this value at an annual average of $4.11 million per NSX Advanced load balancer organization($230, 891 per Avi Service Engine)in the following areas: customers reported leveraging its use to make their ganizations no longer need to overprovision application application services much more efficient and effective. IDC ervices, which was necessary with hardware-based ADC appliances Using NSX Advanced Load Balancer, they can quantifies this value at an move capacity through software-defined processes to address annual average of $4.11 million fluctuations in demand, enabling them to more efficiently use per organization(S230, 891 per ese resources. Further, the software-defined nature of NSX Avi Service Engine Advanced Load Balancer and its ability to streamline overall capacity makes management application services, such load balancing, more efficient Enhanced agility and elastic scalability Because NSX Advanced Load Balancer offers ftware-defined processes, study participants can scale application services in far less time as required for IT and business operations. With VMware, study participants have nearly eliminated lag time for provisioning these resources, changing fundamentally how IT and application development teams leverage application services resources. Supporting and driving business. Through the agility and scalability, NsX Advanced Load Balancer easily keeps pace with the speed of business change faced by study participants Further, their ability to automate application services resources allows them to offer new functionalities such as self-service provisioning for internal users and customers 2020|DC #US43643418RF
©2020 IDC #US43643418RF 6 Balancer a core part of containerization initiatives. Almost all study participants reported using NSX Advanced Load Balancer as part of private cloud and software-defined networking initiatives, and about half of study participants deployed it to refresh their load-balancing environments (see Table 2). TABLE 2 NSX Advanced Load Balancer Environments Average Median Number of datacenters 4 3 Number of Avi Service Engines 18 16 Data throughput (Gbps) 1.5 1.5 Number of business applications 507 118 n = 6 Source: IDC, 2018 Business Value Analysis: NSX Advanced Load Balancer NSX Advanced Load Balancer customers reported leveraging its use to make their application services much more efficient and effective. IDC quantifies this value at an annual average of $4.11 million per organization ($230,891 per Avi Service Engine) in the following areas: ▪ Lower costs. With NSX Advanced Load Balancer, interviewed organizations no longer need to overprovision application services, which was necessary with hardware-based ADC appliances. Using NSX Advanced Load Balancer, they can move capacity through software-defined processes to address fluctuations in demand, enabling them to more efficiently use these resources. Further, the software-defined nature of NSX Advanced Load Balancer and its ability to streamline overall capacity makes management application services, such as load balancing, more efficient. ▪ Enhanced agility and elastic scalability. Because NSX Advanced Load Balancer offers software-defined processes, study participants can scale application services in far less time as required for IT and business operations. With VMware, study participants have nearly eliminated lag time for provisioning these resources, changing fundamentally how IT and application development teams leverage application services resources. ▪ Supporting and driving business. Through the agility and scalability, NSX Advanced Load Balancer easily keeps pace with the speed of business change faced by study participants. Further, their ability to automate application services resources allows them to offer new functionalities such as self-service provisioning for internal users and customers. NSX Advanced Load Balancer customers reported leveraging its use to make their application services much more efficient and effective. IDC quantifies this value at an annual average of $4.11 million per organization ($230,891 per Avi Service Engine)
Reduced ADC/Load-Balancing Resource Costs Study participants reported that moving to NSX Advanced Load Balancer has changed how they pay for and consume application On average, these NSX services. On average, these NSX Advanced Load Balancer customers Advanced load balancer reported that they will spend 52% less than they otherwise would customers reported that they Cost-related benefits fall into three categories will spend 52% less than they otherwise would Optimizing use of capacity through software-defined processes. The software-defined nature of NSX Advanced Load Balancer means that network teams can move and provision application service resources with ease, allowing optimal use of capacity through higher utilization rates and reuse. As one survey participant stated Whenever we need more load-balancing capacity with NSX Advanced Load Balancer, we canyust spin It Eliminating need to overprovision Knowing that NsX With NSX Advanced load Advanced Load Balancer offers the agility and scalability required to match business demand eliminates-for all intents Balancer, we re not paying to and purposes- the need for study participants to overprovision due to the overprovision their application services resources to meet software-defined nature of unexpected surges in demand. Commenting on this, one the platform. [ Previously] survey participant explained: With NSX Advanced Load we had to have more capacity Balancer, were not paying to overprovision due to the just sitting around before software-defined nature of the platform./Previous/y/, we had because we needed high to have more capacity just sitting around before because we availability we now can meet needed high availability. We now can meet that more easily and at lower cost with MsX Advanced Load balancer that more easily and at lo cost with NSX Advanced Using commodity hardware. Study participants also ference their ability to avoid vendor lock-in and reduce Balancer hardware costs by running virtualized NSX Advanced Load Balancer environments on less expensive commodity servers compared with costlier appliance-based ADC solutions Study participants reported across the board that they have substantially lowered the cost of providing application services with NsX Advanced Load Balancer. One interviewed NsX Advanced Load Balancer customer customer explained: We are saving money now and expect to save more money on capital and operating expenses while getting optimized services and a more flexible architecture We did a case calculation, comparing licenses and hardware, and estimated that we would save a minimum of 58% for the full stack with sX advanced load balancer More Efficient Application Delivery and Load-Balancing Operations In addition to lower costs in provisioning application services, study participants noted that NsX Advanced Load Balancer has allowed them to more efficiently perform these operations. Previously, they spent too much time -often valuable engineering time-on provisioning and capacity issues and carrying out changes. However, by deploying NSX Advanced Load Balancer, these organizations have freed up network engineering time to take on other projects and support higher priority IT initiatives One study participant explained that, by going from relying on more manual processes for provisioning resources to automated processes with NSX Advanced Load Balancer, it has avoided needing to enlarge its network operations team to handle business growth. Another NSX Advanced Load 2020|DC #US43643418RF
©2020 IDC #US43643418RF 7 Reduced ADC/Load-Balancing Resource Costs Study participants reported that moving to NSX Advanced Load Balancer has changed how they pay for and consume application services. On average, these NSX Advanced Load Balancer customers reported that they will spend 52% less than they otherwise would. Cost-related benefits fall into three categories: ▪ Optimizing use of capacity through software-defined processes. The software-defined nature of NSX Advanced Load Balancer means that network teams can move and provision application service resources with ease, allowing optimal use of capacity through higher utilization rates and reuse. As one survey participant stated: "Whenever we need more load-balancing capacity with NSX Advanced Load Balancer, we can just spin it up." ▪ Eliminating need to overprovision. Knowing that NSX Advanced Load Balancer offers the agility and scalability required to match business demand eliminates — for all intents and purposes — the need for study participants to overprovision their application services resources to meet unexpected surges in demand. Commenting on this, one survey participant explained: "With NSX Advanced Load Balancer, we're not paying to overprovision due to the software-defined nature of the platform [Previously], we had to have more capacity just sitting around before because we needed high availability. We now can meet that more easily and at lower cost with NSX Advanced Load Balancer." ▪ Using commodity hardware. Study participants also referenced their ability to avoid vendor lock-in and reduce hardware costs by running virtualized NSX Advanced Load Balancer environments on less expensive commodity servers compared with costlier appliance-based ADC solutions. Study participants reported across the board that they have substantially lowered the cost of providing application services with NSX Advanced Load Balancer. One interviewed NSX Advanced Load Balancer customer customer explained: "We are saving money now and expect to save more money on capital and operating expenses while getting optimized services and a more flexible architecture We did a case calculation, comparing licenses and hardware, and estimated that we would save a minimum of 58% for the full stack with NSX Advanced Load Balancer." More Efficient Application Delivery and Load-Balancing Operations In addition to lower costs in provisioning application services, study participants noted that NSX Advanced Load Balancer has allowed them to more efficiently perform these operations. Previously, they spent too much time — often valuable engineering time — on provisioning and capacity issues and carrying out changes. However, by deploying NSX Advanced Load Balancer, these organizations have freed up network engineering time to take on other projects and support higher priority IT initiatives. One study participant explained that, by going from relying on more manual processes for provisioning resources to automated processes with NSX Advanced Load Balancer, it has avoided needing to enlarge its network operations team to handle business growth. Another NSX Advanced Load On average, these NSX Advanced Load Balancer customers reported that they will spend 52% less than they otherwise would. "With NSX Advanced Load Balancer, we're not paying to overprovision due to the software-defined nature of the platform [Previously], we had to have more capacity just sitting around before because we needed high availability. We now can meet that more easily and at lower cost with NSX Advanced Load Balancer
Balancer customer described reallocating staff resources from running and maintaining a hardware- based environment to supporting other areas of the business-a real value as it tries to maximize the value of scarce it talent For study participants, these staff efficiencies are important; their etwork engineers deliver more value when they are engaged in With NSX Advanced load business-enabling activities rather than day-to-day operational matters. One study participant explained: "With NSX Advanced Load Balancer, we havent grown Balancer, we havent grown the teams supporting application del/very the teams supporting vith NSX Advanced Load Balancer, our existing teams can hande application delivery.With the workload. We get more functionality with no additional costs. Our NSX Advanced load balancer team has the added skills of working with the new automated our existing teams can handle environment, and this helps us grow our Paas capabilities the workload we get more functionality with no One survey participant described how self-service features-enabled additional costs by the elasticity of NSX Advanced Load Balancer- is saving significant amounts of engineering time with every request: " We gave our customers self-service capabilities with NSX Advanced Load Balancer. Before they had to make a service request, and we would have to assign an engineer to the request The engineer would have to look at requirements and put in a request for the change with a two-day lead time. At the end of the day, it is moving what was a seven-day journey, down to 5-10 minutes Figure 1 shows that network operations teams responsible for managing ADC/load-balancing onments are 43% more efficient on average with NSX Advanced Load Balancer, amounting to 600 per organization per year in higher team productivity 2020|DC #US43643418RF
©2020 IDC #US43643418RF 8 Balancer customer described reallocating staff resources from running and maintaining a hardwarebased environment to supporting other areas of the business — a real value as it tries to maximize the value of scarce IT talent. For study participants, these staff efficiencies are important; their network engineers deliver more value when they are engaged in business-enabling activities rather than day-to-day operational matters. One study participant explained: "With NSX Advanced Load Balancer, we haven't grown the teams supporting application delivery With NSX Advanced Load Balancer, our existing teams can handle the workload. We get more functionality with no additional costs. Our team has the added skills of working with the new automated environment, and this helps us grow our PaaS capabilities." One survey participant described how self-service features — enabled by the elasticity of NSX Advanced Load Balancer— is saving significant amounts of engineering time with every request: "We gave our customers self-service capabilities with NSX Advanced Load Balancer. Before they had to make a service request, and we would have to assign an engineer to the request. The engineer would have to look at requirements and put in a request for the change with a two-day lead time. At the end of the day, it is moving what was a seven-day journey, down to 5–10 minutes." Figure 1 shows that network operations teams responsible for managing ADC/load-balancing environments are 43% more efficient on average with NSX Advanced Load Balancer, amounting to $383,600 per organization per year in higher team productivity. "With NSX Advanced Load Balancer, we haven't grown the teams supporting application delivery With NSX Advanced Load Balancer, our existing teams can handle the workload. We get more functionality with no additional costs
FIGURE 1 Staff Impact with Management of ADC/Load-Balancing Environments 9 Efficiencies with NSX Advanced load Balancer. 43% more efficient on average $383, 600 per organization per g year in higher team prodi a Higher productivity with NSX Advanced Load Balancer a Staff requirements with NSX Advanced Load Balancer Source: IDC. 2018 Overall Cost of providing Application Services Resources These organizations ability to lower Figure 2 shows the extent to which these organizations costs of providing application services ability to lower costs of providing application services capacity and more efficient capacity and more efficient management reduces the cost of management reduces the cost of operating these environments. IDC calculates that, on operating these environments average, these organizations are seeing 47% lower costs DC calculates that, on average, these with NSX Advanced Load Balancer- saving an average of $2.57 million per organization over three years($144, 316 per organizations are seeing 47%lower costs with nsx advanced load balancer NSX Advanced Load Balancer)-even as they also substantially improve their ability to address business demand, thanks to much increased agility and flexibility 2020|DC #US43643418RF
©2020 IDC #US43643418RF 9 FIGURE 1 Staff Impact with Management of ADC/Load-Balancing Environments Source: IDC, 2018 Overall Cost of Providing Application Services Resources Figure 2 shows the extent to which these organizations' ability to lower costs of providing application services capacity and more efficient management reduces the cost of operating these environments. IDC calculates that, on average, these organizations are seeing 47% lower costs with NSX Advanced Load Balancer — saving an average of $2.57 million per organization over three years ($144,316 per NSX Advanced Load Balancer) — even as they also substantially improve their ability to address business demand, thanks to much increased agility and flexibility. 5.1 3.8 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (FTEs per organization) Higher productivity with NSX Advanced Load Balancer Staff requirements with NSX Advanced Load Balancer Efficiencies with NSX Advanced Load Balancer: 43% more efficient on average $383,600 per organization per year in higher team productivity These organizations' ability to lower costs of providing application services capacity and more efficient management reduces the cost of operating these environments. IDC calculates that, on average, these organizations are seeing 47% lower costs with NSX Advanced Load Balancer
FIGURE 2 Three-Year Cost Comparison 6,000.000 S549M 5422,800 5,000,000 47% ≌4,000,000 2,679,300 lower s292M 83000 251,500 g 2,000,000 51,528500 385,300 1,000,000 51,136,100 Without nsX Advanced load balancer With nSX Advanced Load balancer a Staff time costs for troubleshooting ADC/ load balancin a Staff time costs for managing ADC/load balancing ADC/Load-balancing costs Source: IDC. 2018 2020|DC #US43643418RF
©2020 IDC #US43643418RF 10 FIGURE 2 Three-Year Cost Comparison Source: IDC, 2018 $2,385,300 $1,136,100 $2,679,300 $1,528,500 $422,800 $251,500 0 1,000,000 2,000,000 3,000,000 4,000,000 5,000,000 6,000,000 Without NSX Advanced Load Balancer With NSX Advanced Load Balancer ($ per three years) Staff time costs for troubleshooting ADC/load balancing Staff time costs for managing ADC/load balancing ADC/load-balancing costs $5.49M $2.92M 47% lower
