Tottenham Hotspur cuts licensing fees 85% with VMware migration to HPE

Tottenham Hotspur, a Premier League soccer team, has significantly reduced its IT licensing fees by migrating from VMware to Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's (HPE) Morpheus VM Essentials (VME) virtualization software. The club reported savings of over 85 percent on these fees.

Tottenham confirmed it is transitioning its stadium's server, storage, and networking infrastructure to HPE solutions, managed under HPE's GreenLake hybrid cloud platform. This new setup is supported by VME and HPE's OpsRamp software, which is designed for managing hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Rob Pickering, Tottenham's CTO, stated that HPE is overseeing the hybrid cloud-managed service.

The club is nearing completion of a comprehensive overhaul of its stadium's data center and network infrastructure. This includes a six-aisle data center equipped with HPE's ProLiant Compute Gen12 server hardware and Alletra Storage MP. HPE highlighted in a recent announcement that these solutions are enabling Tottenham to manage a complex, multi-site environment more efficiently, modernize its virtualization platforms, and reduce operational costs.

Pickering indicated that the timing of their technology replacement cycles prompted the decision. He described hypervisor technology as typically an unglamorous component of IT infrastructure, often purchased from a single vendor. He also suggested that VMware, a dominant player in the market, made decisions that were not aligned with the interests of system integrators or customers.