Western Union announced on Wednesday at Nutanix’s annual .NEXT conference that it is phasing out its VMware virtualization platform in favor of a complete transition to Nutanix’s enterprise cloud solution. The migration involves between 900 and 1,200 applications running across a server cluster of 3,900 cores.
Brandon Shaw, Vice President and Head of Technology Services at Western Union, stated that the company is six months into the migration process. He noted that Western Union is in the midst of a core business transformation focused on being customer-centric, which necessitates working with more flexible vendor partners.
Shaw was candid about the challenges, noting that while communication channels with Broadcom remain open, the partnership has faced significant hurdles. Broadcom’s aggressive software licensing strategy for VMware—specifically the mandatory bundling of the Cloud Foundation private cloud suite—has driven up overall operational costs.
Seeking Technical Flexibility and Business Continuity
Addressing concerns regarding vendor stability, Shaw described the relationship between Western Union and Nutanix as "symbiotic." During sales negotiations, Nutanix provided clear guarantees regarding business continuity, which alleviated the company’s concerns over potential acquisition risks.
From a technical standpoint, the deployment flexibility offered by Nutanix was a key deciding factor. Western Union operates in over 200 countries, and some workloads must remain on-premises. Shaw explained that Nutanix ensures these applications can be deployed smoothly across any necessary infrastructure.
The migration has not been without its challenges. Shaw acknowledged that the team encountered expected technical obstacles when dealing with legacy software. The team is currently pushing the migration forward by refactoring code or evaluating whether certain software is still necessary, noting, "The core focus is on how to complete the delivery efficiently."
Meanwhile, South Korea’s largest theme park, Everland, has also joined the migration trend. Jinyoung Woo, an infrastructure engineer at Everland, toldThe Registerthat their previous use of VMware Cloud on AWS failed to meet their quality requirements, and that Broadcom’s revised licensing fees had exceeded their budget.
Faced with a tight three-month migration window, Everland ultimately chose Nutanix to mitigate technical risks. Woo confirmed that the migration was completed on schedule with no negative impact on the guest experience.
