Microsoft snags Fortune 500 customer away from VMware
CH2M Hill joins the list of companies making a switch to Microsoft Hyper-V, citing cost savings as the big reason for the migration
Follow @infoworldThis week's VMworld conference is all about VMware's technologies, its users, and its partner ecosystem -- but that isn't stopping Microsoft from trying to put a damper on VMware's festivities. Microsoft may once again find itself squeezed into a 10-by-10-foot booth at VMworld, and the company may not be showing off Hyper-V during the show, but that doesn't mean it's limiting itself to simple Twitter conversations as it did last year.
Only days before VMworld kicked off, Microsoft announced it had taken a new Fortune 500 customer away from VMware. CH2M Hill, an engineering, procurement, construction, management, and operations company, was an avid VMware ESX hypervisor user going back to 2005, but it's decided to switch to Microsoft Hyper-V.
[ Also on InfoWorld: Are VMware shops ready to move from vSphere ESX to ESXi? | Make sure to keep up with all the latest virtualization news with InfoWorld's virtualization newsletter. ]
CH2M Hill cited costs as a major driver in its decision, saying it expects the move to save the company more than $3.2 million over the next three to five years. It also expects to reduce server administration work by 30 percent, allowing the company to focus on more strategic work such as a branch office virtualization, infrastructure upgrading, and architectural planning.
"The company was cutting costs across the board, and we wanted to push forward with virtualizing more servers, especially in our field offices, but we just couldn't do it with VMware," said Greg Barton, a senior analyst at the Enterprise Systems Group in CH2M Hill. "By switching to Microsoft we will save $280,000 in software fees. Plus, we can now afford to tackle our 600 field servers and are aiming to virtualize 20 percent of these computers each year. At $5,000 a server, that's a savings of $3 million over the next three to five years."
