Maximize ROI with Customer Proven Strategies for Cloud Native Success

Enterprises may find themselves stuck with expensive vendors, feeling like they have no real alternative. They struggle to balance trusted legacy systems that “still work” with the urgent need to keep up with competition. Adding to these challenges is the fact that many systems become outdated when a new version drops, forcing you to continually update and modernize on a vendor’s timeline. It shouldn’t be so challenging to lower those huge bills and still have the freedom to pick the most suitable technology. 

Most companies understand the demand for new rollouts and better customer experience, but faster modernization can seem out of reach. Fortunately, it is possible to reframe your position. You have the opportunity to adopt new technology that is aligned to your needs, rather than forcing your business to reorient around your tools. Enterprises like Aussie Broadband have made this shift, and they are benefiting from reduced costs and improved business outcomes.

On its surface, and especially in a CapEx budget, cloud native adoption may look like any other technical project. For companies like Aussie Broadband, however, modernizing to a private cloud native environment was a strategic business decision. Optimizing your Kubernetes management can provide up to 258% ROI and millions in annual benefits. And by reframing IT modernization as fuel for ROI, teams can gain greater cross-functional support for the investment.

Turning cloud native investment into measurable returns

Most enterprises acknowledge Kubernetes’ strategic value, but teams hesitate to modernize because of the inherent risks, costs and complexity of these projects. At the same time, they know that sticking with outdated systems will increase technical debt and increase total expenditure. These accrued costs get even larger when considering revenue lost from dissatisfied customers that turn to competitors.

By rooting transformation-focused conversations in business impacts, technical teams can engender trust and curiosity. The upfront effort to standardize deployments will lead to better resource utilization and, in turn, reduced infrastructure costs. In addition, standardization will accelerate responses in the face of demand spikes, unexpected disruptions and changing market conditions. Separately, if the company can provide dependable service updates, it will experience improved customer satisfaction and retention. 

Over the past two decades, Aussie Broadband grew exponentially, and this growth caused the company’s technology landscape to become increasingly complex and fragmented. In addition, the price of maintaining an existing commercial virtualization solution kept rising. 

Aussie Broadband has since invested in SUSE Rancher Prime, which has generated significant business impacts. Time spent on Kubernetes cluster provisioning has been reduced by up to 98%. Day-to-day operations are up to 30% more efficient. These types of results are tangible to professionals across an organization, even leaders who may be hesitant about technological transformation.

SUSE Rancher Prime with Virtualization has the potential to make tangible impacts on your business. IDC’s recent research digs into the details. 

Assess your cloud native readiness with your workloads

Modern cloud native environments are powerful and complex, and modernization at the enterprise level is never one-size-fits-all. Some companies may adopt a full cloud native stack as soon as it is financially viable, while others will benefit from phased approaches.

To find out what you can migrate to Kubernetes, conduct a thorough assessment. This can help ensure that you implement the right transformation project at the right time. In such assessments, you evaluate the full environment and identify key opportunities and limitations. Containerized apps and monoliths on VMs are especially important to note. Monolith apps can’t be as easily migrated with a method like “lift and shift,” for example. Containers will be much easier to bring over to Kubernetes.

This provides a starting point for deciding how to best prioritize and implement changes. Ultimately, even large enterprises with significant resources may choose to take an incremental approach following such an assessment. A methodical migration is sometimes referred to as the “strangler pattern”. 

Without using a tool like SUSE Rancher Prime, which can unify the management of your infrastructure, it can be challenging to find and document all of your machines and services. A centralized tool with observability capabilities can help you properly audit your landscape. 

How do you migrate without having a complete view? Effectively, it’s the same process, but it may involve more iterations. You break off services one by one as you modernize and, ideally, work on improving system visibility simultaneously. 

Amplifying Kubernetes with automation

While it is possible to deploy containers manually, doing so undermines Kubernetes’ consistency, repeatability and scalability. These strengths are especially valuable in complex or growing environments. Infrastructure as Code is one method to automate provisioning and delivery. IaC can enhance transparency and improve consistency because of version control and auditable changes. It helps keep systems manageable and standardized. Unsurprisingly, it is a best practice of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

With a solution like SUSE Rancher Prime, you can automate fleets of clusters across your entire technological landscape. For example, Aussie Broadband simplified container management and significantly reduced deployment times — from two days to just one to two hours. These benefits have compounded, for example by improving the company’s time-to-market for new services. 

“Delivering new virtual machines or new container instances can take anywhere from one to two days,” says O’Shea. “With the automation that we’ve been able to achieve on top of the SUSE platform, we’ve got that down to one to two hours.” –Ben O’Shea General Manager, Transformation & Cloud, Aussie Broadband

Choosing platforms and partners that future-proof your stack

Even if the time and effort is notable, it is always worth it to choose the right technology platforms and partners for your business. For Aussie Broadband, success required the consolidation of VMs and Kubernetes clusters into a single, intuitive management interface. As a result, SUSE Virtualization was key to their transformation. 

Aussie Broadband also sought to upskill their engineers and leveraged SUSE Consulting Services and SUSE Platinum eLearning. As a result, their teams are equipped with hands-on expertise and are prepared to confidently navigate the new realities of the Aussie Broadband environment.

In addition to investing in upfront training and consulting services, the company continues to benefit from SUSE Rancher Prime. It is intentionally designed to empower all skill levels in your organization. 

Real-world impact results in speed and ROI in action

By choosing SUSE Rancher Prime, a comprehensive cloud native solution, Aussie Broadband escaped escalating VMware costs, consolidated VM and Kubernetes management into a single platform. The company has improved Kubernetes deployment times up to 98% — going from two days down to two hours or less. As a result, Aussie Broadband has realized operational efficiency gains of close to 30%, freeing up significant resources for innovation instead of maintenance. Impacts like these provide companies with a significant and undeniable market advantage.

Hear directly from Aussie Broadband’s Ben O’Shea about the impact of the company’s cloud native transformation:

Ready to optimize your cloud native environment? Download the white paper and learn how to maximize performance, flexibility and security in your containerized environments.