How did VMware Cloud Foundation help Grinnell Mutual address technology debt?

VCF provided a modern private cloud platform that gives developers self-service access to cloud-native capabilities on-premises, enabling the company to modernize legacy applications and support containerized workloads while maintaining control over their infrastructure.

What specific cost savings did Grinnell Mutual achieve with VMware Cloud Foundation?

Grinnell Mutual saved $1 million in infrastructure costs by implementing VMware Cloud Foundation, which unified their storage, compute, and networking architecture while simplifying management and enhancing security.

How Grinnell Mutual Saved $1M with VMware Cloud Foundation

Name: How Grinnell Mutual Saved $1M with VMware Cloud Foundation
Uploaded: 2026-04-23T15:48:30-04:00
Duration: 2 min 22 s
Description: TL;DR Grinnell Mutual deployed VMware Cloud Foundation 9 to modernize a 116-year-old insurance company's IT infrastructure and eliminate decades of technology debt. The platform provides developers with self-service access to cloud-native capabilities...

VMware

04/23/2026

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Transcript

Iowa. We've upgraded VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2.1 to VMware Cloud Foundation 9, and the thing I'm really the most excited about is delivering all of these capabilities that are so well integrated out to the people that need to use them, whether it's a developer or an internal customer. We have a lot of companies that are really old like us. We have all of this tech debt, and we have been struggling a long time with how do we support our developers in a more modern development cycle. And now we have a lot of software that we're using currently that is starting to come to us in a containerized format. For the first time, we're going to be giving our developers a native cloud experience on premise. And that is going to create momentum that we can use to service that tech debt and bring up a lot of legacy applications to modern technology. VMware Cloud Foundation is allowing us to provide new technology and new capabilities to our developers. One of the ways we're doing that is with Data Services Manager. We're going to deliver new services to our developers that provide that full stack developer service to them on prem. We get a lot of benefit from B2Fend Distributed Firewall. I think the biggest benefit is just simply being able to tag workloads and not have to think about IP addresses anymore. That's really powerful because it's going to allow us to automate most of that work for providing that protection to those various workloads. VMware Cloud Foundation is addressing our infrastructure needs by providing this really unified architecture for our storage, compute, and networking. vSAN ESA is so easy to manage that we almost don't even have to think about what's going on with our storage anymore. NSX is the first time that I'm bringing my network team into these conversations with my systems team. All of that shared understanding just makes all of our jobs easier. VMware Cloud Foundation just makes it easier for us to do those things and start forgetting that the infrastructure really is there and start solving those much deeper problems.

TL;DR

Grinnell Mutual deployed VMware Cloud Foundation 9 to modernize a 116-year-old insurance company's IT infrastructure and eliminate decades of technology debt.
The platform provides developers with self-service access to cloud-native capabilities on-premises, accelerating application development and supporting containerized workloads.
Implementation of vSAN ESA and NSX simplified infrastructure management, automated security through distributed firewall tagging, and enabled cross-team collaboration between network and systems groups, resulting in $1 million in cost savings.

Summary

Grinnell Mutual, a 116-year-old property casualty and reinsurance company based in Iowa, transformed its IT infrastructure by implementing VMware Cloud Foundation 9 to address decades of accumulated technology debt. The company needed to modernize its software development practices to accelerate feature delivery for insurance customers and agents while supporting an increasing number of containerized applications. By deploying VCF as a unified private cloud platform, Grinnell Mutual created a self-service environment that gives developers native cloud experiences on-premises. The implementation integrated compute, storage, and networking capabilities through vSAN ESA and NSX, enabling the IT team to automate workload protection, simplify infrastructure management, and foster unprecedented collaboration between network and systems teams. This modernization effort resulted in $1 million in infrastructure cost savings while positioning the company to tackle legacy application modernization with renewed momentum.

Chapters

0:00 - Company Background and Challenge
0:28 - Technology Debt and Modernization Needs
1:02 - Developer Services and Capabilities
1:37 - Infrastructure Benefits and Team Collaboration

Key Quotes

0:45 "For the first time, we're going to be giving our developers a native cloud experience on premise."
1:23 "I think the biggest benefit is just simply being able to tag workloads and not have to think about IP addresses anymore."
1:55 "NSX is the first time that I'm bringing my network team into these conversations with my systems team."

Categories:

» Cloud
» Cloud » Hybrid Cloud
» Cloud » Private Cloud
» Cloud » Public Cloud
» Data Management
» Data Management » Converged Infrastructure
» Data Protection » Backup & Recovery
» Cybersecurity » Cloud Security
» Data Protection

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TL;DR

Summary

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