646-558-2225Client Need
An MSP had spent years building and managing its own private cloud, hosting production workloads for multiple clients.
They took pride in what they had built and were understandably reluctant to move away from their in-house platform. However, the environment was running on aging on-prem VMware infrastructure, and the economics were rapidly deteriorating:
- VMware pricing had increased by almost 5x
- New hardware and licensing costs were significant
- Highly trained technical staff were tied up just keeping the hosting platform alive
The MSP needed a way to:
- Maintain or improve performance for client workloads
- Escape escalating infrastructure and licensing costs
- Free senior technical staff to focus on revenue-generating projects and services, not just hosting maintenance
Project Overview
The MSP partnered with CaaB to transition from their self-managed hosting stack to an MSP-ready, high-performance cloud platform.
The goal was to:
- Replace aging VMware-based infrastructure
- Offload the complexity of running a hosting business
- Maintain a white-label, MSP-centric experience for their end clients
Challenges
- Emotional and Strategic Attachment: The MSP had invested years into building their own cloud and took pride in it, making the decision to change both technical and emotional.
- Aging Infrastructure: On-prem hardware was due for expensive refresh cycles.
- Exploding VMware Costs: Licensing costs had risen dramatically, eroding margins and making long-term sustainability questionable.
- Talent Allocation: Senior technical staff were spending a disproportionate amount of time on maintenance, patching, troubleshooting, and capacity planning instead of higher-value work.
Solution
CaaB delivered an MSP-ready, high-performance cloud platform tailored for service providers, offering:
- High-performance compute and storage for client workloads
- A white-label environment, allowing the MSP to maintain their brand presence
- Predictable, partner-friendly pricing that avoided the spiraling OEM licensing model
- Built-in redundancy, monitoring, and management capabilities
This allowed the MSP to preserve their role as the trusted hosting provider for their clients—without the burden of owning and maintaining the underlying infrastructure.
Migration Strategy
- Discovery & Planning: CaaB and the MSP mapped out hosted workloads and dependencies, prioritizing critical services and high-visibility clients.
- Phased Migration: Workloads were moved from the MSP’s on-prem VMware environment to CaaB in controlled phases, minimizing service impact.
- Validation: Performance, availability, and application behavior were validated post-migration to ensure a seamless experience for end customers.
- Knowledge Transfer & Handover: Operational responsibilities for infrastructure were transitioned to CaaB, while the MSP retained full ownership of client relationships and service delivery.
Results
- Higher Performance: Client workloads ran on modern, optimized infrastructure, with performance equal to or better than the MSP’s legacy environment.
- Massive Cost Savings: By eliminating the need for new hardware, VMware licensing, and data center overhead, the MSP saved tens of thousands of dollars per month in hosting-related costs.
- Staff Redeployment: Highly skilled technical staff were freed from day-to-day infrastructure management and redeployed to revenue-producing initiatives such as advanced services, consulting, and new solution development.
- Reduced Operational Risk: Aging hardware and escalating vendor costs were replaced with a stable, scalable platform and predictable economics.
Key Takeaways
This project shows how an MSP can evolve beyond running its own data center while still protecting and growing its hosting business.
By moving their private cloud workloads to CaaB’s MSP-ready, high-performance platform, the MSP:
- Escaped crippling VMware and hardware costs
- Improved performance and resilience for client environments
- Freed senior engineers to focus on business growth instead of infrastructure firefighting
- Strengthened margins and simplified long-term planning
The result is an MSP that’s no longer weighed down by its own infrastructure, but empowered by a cloud platform purpose-built to support its services, clients, and future growth.
