Financial Services and Industry Challenges
The financial services industry is navigating a perfect storm of challenges. Institutions are under relentless pressure to modernize IT environments while addressing rising regulatory demands, expanding cyber threats, and escalating infrastructure costs. At the same time, they must maintain agility to adapt workloads seamlessly across on-premises and cloud environments without risking service disruptions. Regulatory frameworks such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandate comprehensive data protection and audits across all workflows. Failure to meet these obligations risks not only heavy financial penalties but also reputational damage that can undermine customer trust.
As a result, CIOs and CTOs are looking for alternative approaches to design secure, compliant, and flexible IT environments that can adapt quickly to market needs without sacrificing performance or increasing risk.
Client Challenges
One North American financial institution was feeling these pressures acutely. The company was burdened with high VMware licensing and infrastructure costs spread across multiple vendors, which created operational complexity and unnecessary expense. It lacked a secure, banking-compliant platform for its most critical workloads, which heightened risks during disaster recovery and migration scenarios. To make matters more complicated, downtime was measured in days or even weeks, eroding customer trust and exposing the institution to compliance risks. The client needed a simpler, more secure, and more cost-efficient way to run and protect its VMware workloads.
Client Business Requirements
Their business requirements were clear. They needed a single managed cloud platform to consolidate their VMware environments, reduce costs, and deliver low-downtime disaster recovery with predictable recovery times. Regulatory compliance was non-negotiable, and the solution had to ensure that security and monitoring were embedded into the environment. Just as importantly, the institution wanted to establish a pathway to modernization, including the ability to containerize applications in the future with Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud. Their specific needs included:
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Consolidate VMware environments into a single managed cloud platform.
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Provide low-downtime disaster recovery with predictable recovery times.
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Ensure compliance with financial services regulations.
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Reduce costs without compromising performance or end-user experience.
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Establish a path to modernization
IBM Strategy and Solution
IBM addressed these requirements by combining its long-standing relationship with the client, deep financial services expertise, and proven ability to manage critical workloads in secure, compliant environments. The cornerstone of the solution was IBM Cloud for VMware Cloud Foundation as a Service (VCFaaS), a fully managed VMware environment purpose-built for security and regulatory compliance. To minimize downtime during disaster recovery and migration, VMware Cloud Director Availability (VCDA) was integrated, enabling recovery in hours rather than days or weeks. IBM Cloud Disaster Recovery added continuous resilience, while IBM Cloud for Financial Services provided the regulatory framework and banking-grade security controls needed to meet stringent compliance requirements. Finally, IBM incorporated the migration program, which allowed the client to transition existing VMware investments to IBM Cloud without duplicating licensing costs, further reducing vendor expenses.
Solution Components and Benefits
This integrated approach transformed the client’s VMware strategy. By leveraging VCFaaS, the institution eliminated the need for a separate managed service provider, simplifying VMware management while lowering overall operational complexity. VMware Cloud Director Availability provided a secure, resilient foundation that minimized downtime and protected customer trust.
Both migration and disaster recovery support are available when you install the VMware Cloud Director Availability service. The VCDA service is included by default in all multi-tenant virtual data centers (VDCs) and optionally included in your single-tenant VCF as a Service Cloud Director site order at no charge. For a VCDA disaster recovery configuration, a monthly charge is incurred per protected virtual machine (VM). The client can create the following disaster recover configurations:
- VCF as a Service single-tenant or multi-tenant to VCF as a Service single-tenant or multi-tenant environments
- On-premises to VCF as a Service environments
- VMware Cloud Foundation for Classic to VCF as a Service environments
For a tutorial on how to create a disaster recovery configuration that uses a VCF as a Service single-tenant instance as the primary workload environment and a VCF as a Service multi-tenant instance as the disaster recovery environment, see Configuring disaster recovery with VMware Cloud Director Availability. For more information about disaster recovery configurations, see Protecting workload data in VCF as a Service with VCDA.
With the migration program, the client not only reduced costs associated with Broadcom licensing but also gained a clear migration pathway that aligned with their modernization strategy. At the same time, the IBM Cloud for Financial Services framework assured regulators, auditors, and internal stakeholders that all workloads were being operated with built-in banking-grade security and compliance controls.
Measurable Impact
The results were significant. The client achieved an average of 27% cost savings compared to its legacy VMware environment through flexible hourly pricing and fine-grained cost control. More than 350 critical virtual machines were migrated to the IBM Cloud platform with minimal disruption, and disaster recovery times were reduced from days to hours. Operations were simplified, allowing IT teams to focus more on innovation and less on vendor management, while the secure framework provided the compliance confidence required to support long-term growth.
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27% average cost savings with flexible hourly pricing and fine-grained cost control.
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Simplified VMware management by removing the need for third-party providers.
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Built-in banking-grade security aligned with financial services compliance standards.
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Faster disaster recovery, reducing downtime from days to hours.
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A clear path to modernization with containerization on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud (ROKS).
What’s Next?
The institution is now focused on extending these benefits even further. In the short term, the client will continue using VCFaaS with disaster recovery for its most critical workloads, cutting costs without sacrificing quality or user experience. In the long term, the plan is to fully leverage IBM’s migration program to migrate all VMware workloads to IBM Cloud.
How to Get Started with VCFaaS
Organizations that want to replicate this success can begin their modernization journey by assessing their VMware workloads for migration readiness and engaging IBM to design a secure, compliant, and cost-optimized VCFaaS deployment. VMware Cloud Director Availability can then be used to enable seamless migration and disaster recovery replication. Finally IBM's migration program provided a smooth path to transition existing VMware investments to the cloud while lowering licensing costs and streamlining operations. With IBM Cloud VCFaaS, financial institutions gain measurable cost savings, regulatory compliance, and a future-ready foundation that accelerates their modernization journey.
Pricing and Promotions
1) Receive $1000 in IBM Cloud credits to use in the next 60 days. Enter Promo code "VCFAAS1000"
2) Limited time promo: 50% discount on 1 and 3 year contract
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