CASE 58 · GLIMMER · 2025
Off VMware, with an Outposts cushion for the workloads that needed it.
A broadcast media company had 60 VMs on VMware running everything from front-office IT to broadcast control systems. Most could move to EC2 outright; a handful needed sub-millisecond latency to studio hardware. We rehosted the bulk to EC2 and ran the broadcast-adjacent workloads on AWS Outposts in their facility.
Broadcast media
MIGRATION
2025
RESULTS
What changed, by the numbers.
VMS MIGRATED
60
BROADCAST LATENCY
< 0.8ms
VMWARE LICENCE SAVINGS
$182K/yr
RUNTIME ENV. PARITY
100%
HOW IT WENT
The broadcast workloads were the constraint. They drove physical studio equipment over SDI and IP-over-fibre with hard timing requirements. Most cloud architects would have said "keep them on-prem." We said "put Outposts in the rack the VMware was in, and call it a day."
AWS Application Migration Service handled the front-office workloads — 51 of the 60 VMs. They moved to EC2 in five waves over eight weeks. The remaining nine workloads landed on Outposts running in the broadcast facility, keeping the sub-millisecond latency to studio equipment intact.
VMware was retired at the end of the migration. The annual VMware licence saving net of Outposts cost came in at $182k. The broadcast team noticed no functional change in their workflow. The runtime parity (same OS images, same runtime) meant zero rework on the applications themselves.
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