This article is based on statements made by DXC Technology and VMware representatives at VMworld 2019 in San Francisco, as originally reported by ARN (arnnet.com.au).
Background: Origin Energy’s Cloud Ambition
Australian energy company Origin Energy had set itself a target of significantly shifting workloads to the cloud by 2022. To achieve that goal, it leveraged its existing relationship with managed services provider DXC Technology. The challenge was substantial: Origin needed to move off legacy hardware inside an ageing data centre while simultaneously addressing security requirements and preserving years of investment in VMware tooling.
The Proof of Concept: ~100 Workloads with Minimal Disruption
DXC’s Vice President and General Manager of VMware’s Integrated Practice, Jeff Moyer, told VMworld 2019 attendees that a proof of concept (PoC) had already moved roughly 100 workloads into a VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS environment for Origin Energy — with “little to no impact or outage” during the migration.
Following the successful PoC, DXC moved into a larger-scale deployment phase. As Moyer described it:
“We’re now shifting from PoC into a larger deployment and larger scale movement over time to get them up into the VMC environment. We’re working with VMware using VMC on AWS to come up with an interesting value proposition — moving them out of their data centre, up into a public cloud using the VMware stack of tools, and putting them in a hybrid IT management environment.”
Jeff Moyer, VP & GM, VMware Integrated Practice, DXC Technology
Key Challenges Origin Energy Brought to the Project
According to Moyer, Origin Energy entered the engagement with clearly defined challenges and expected outcomes:
- Legacy hardware retirement: Origin needed to exit ageing data centre infrastructure without disruptive re-platforming.
- Security posture improvement: Moving to a public cloud introduced security concerns that had to be addressed architecturally, not bolted on afterward.
- VMware investment preservation: Origin had invested heavily in VMware tooling — specifically vRealize Automation and vRealize Operations — and did not want to abandon that work.
How VMware HCX Enabled Seamless Workload Migration
A critical technical component of the migration was VMware HCX (Hybrid Cloud Extension), an application mobility platform built into the VMware stack. Rather than relying on DXC’s own data centres as a staging ground, Origin used HCX to move data and workloads directly from its on-premises environment to VMC on AWS.
VMware Senior Solution Engineer Anuj Gupta explained HCX’s broader value to the engagement:
“While HCX helped them to migrate their on-premises environment to the cloud, it also retained all the historical performance data inside vRealize Operations. The customer’s ability to compare the performance of the workload between the on-prem environment and once the workloads start moving to VMC on AWS is a great win for them.”
Anuj Gupta, Senior Solution Engineer, VMware
Retaining historical performance data across the migration boundary is practically significant: it means Origin’s operations teams could validate that workloads were performing comparably or better in the cloud, and detect regressions early rather than discovering them after legacy environments had been decommissioned.
Security: Micro-Segmentation in the VMC Environment
One concrete security outcome DXC delivered during the migration was micro-segmentation. Moving to VMC on AWS gave DXC the opportunity to create security zones within the environment, improving Origin’s overall security posture without requiring separate security tooling outside the VMware stack.
As Moyer noted: “Moving them into the VMC on AWS environment gave us an opportunity to leverage the built-in capability of that platform, do some micro-segmentation for them to create security zones to improve their security posture, as they made that move over into the public cloud.”
Preserving the vRealize Investment
A recurring theme in enterprise cloud migrations is the write-off of existing tooling investment. In this case, DXC specifically structured the migration to preserve Origin’s existing vRealize Automation and vRealize Operations configurations.
“That wasn’t thrown away — we were able to preserve that as we moved them up into this cloud-native model,” Moyer said. This meant Origin’s operations and automation workflows could continue functioning in the new environment without requiring a full rebuild.
DXC’s Broader “VMware Anywhere” Managed Services Strategy
The Origin Energy engagement sits within a broader DXC service offering called “Managed Services for VMware Anywhere.” The positioning is cloud-agnostic from a landing-zone perspective: DXC manages VMware environments regardless of whether they reside in VMC on AWS, VMC on Azure, Google Cloud, or a private cloud.
Moyer described the proposition: “We don’t care where the landing spot is — if it’s in AWS, VMC on AWS, VMC on Azure, Google Cloud, private cloud, any location that the client wanted to land — we are able to manage that environment and preserve that investment clients are making, so they are able to shift workloads up into the cloud pretty efficiently.”
The DXC Managed Services for VMware Cloud on AWS offering specifically includes:
- An integrated set of base and optional value-added services
- Unified management and control across workloads
- A consumption-based commercial model
- Seamless application migration tooling
- Native adjacency to AWS-native services for workloads that need them
Professional Services: Application Rationalisation Before Migration
Beyond the technical migration work, DXC also provided professional services to help Origin analyse its application portfolio and make informed decisions about disposition. The exercise evaluated each workload against several options:
- Lift-and-shift to VMC on AWS — suitable for workloads that needed no refactoring
- Re-host or re-factor — for applications requiring some modernisation
- Move to SaaS — where a commercial equivalent already existed
- Retire — applications that no longer needed to exist in any form
- Cloud-native rebuild — for workloads best served by a greenfield approach
Moyer noted that VMware’s tooling — specifically the visibility and operational data available through vRealize Operations — was essential for making those decisions proactively: “Using the VMware technologies, they can see that, they can operate that, and they can make those decisions and take action on it before it becomes a problem for them or before they have significant issues.”
Key Takeaways for DevOps and Infrastructure Teams
- HCX reduces migration risk by enabling live workload mobility and preserving historical performance telemetry across on-prem and cloud boundaries.
- Micro-segmentation is an architectural opportunity migration creates, not just a migration side-effect — use it to improve security posture rather than simply reproducing flat network designs in the cloud.
- Existing VMware tooling investment is not automatically stranded when moving to VMC on AWS; vRealize Automation and Operations can follow workloads into the cloud environment.
- Cloud-agnostic managed services models reduce lock-in risk for enterprises uncertain about their long-term cloud provider strategy.
- Application rationalisation before migration avoids the common trap of lifting and shifting workloads that should have been retired or replaced.