Globalization 2.0 | Macau SAR Government Department Migrates Core Business from VMware to ZStack

Facing the cost pressure brought by VMware’s shift to a subscription-based pricing model and the stability challenges of aging hardware, a government department in the Macau Special Administrative Region urgently needed to build an entirely new IT infrastructure.

ZStack provided a VMware-to-ZStack cloud platform solution, implemented through a phased deployment strategy. With a flexible and scalable architecture combined with native high availability capabilities, ZStack helped the client build a new IT infrastructure that significantly reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), greatly improved operational efficiency, and ensured continuous and stable operation of critical services. Ultimately, this enabled the customer to establish a secure, controllable, and continuously evolving cloud infrastructure, fulfilling its digital transformation strategic objectives.

The department’s existing IT systems had long been built on VMware’s virtualization platform. However, as digital transformation accelerated, this architecture faced multiple challenges:

Rising Costs: VMware’s shift to a subscription-based pricing model led to increased software licensing and maintenance costs, causing considerable budget pressure.
Hardware Stability Risks: The underlying hardware had been in service for many years, creating stability concerns.
Limited Scalability: The existing architecture lacked flexibility in expansion, hindering agile support for fast-growing new services.
After several months of functional and performance proof-of-concept (POC) testing, the Macau SAR government department decided to adopt ZStack Cloud to achieve the VMware-to-ZStack migration. The project was advanced in phases, balancing short-term feasibility and long-term evolution:

Lightweight Deployment: Initially deployed a three-node hyper-converged infrastructure to quickly set up a pilot cloud environment, reduce upfront investment, and meet testing and partial production needs.
Elastic Expansion: Following successful validation, ZStack Cloud supported smooth scaling, allowing the department to add resources as needed to support more systems migrating gradually.
High Availability & Continuity: Leveraging HA/Backup and SDS dual-active architecture capabilities to ensure critical services remain online and recover quickly.
The ZStack solution demonstrated great flexibility during implementation: starting small and cost-effective, and seamlessly scaling as business needs grow—reducing the client’s long-term operational pressures.

Through this project, the department not only achieved a smooth VMware-to-ZStack replacement but also completed a cost-efficient, scalable upgrade of its government IT infrastructure, showcasing ZStack’s technical strengths and business value in digital transformation scenarios.

Significant Cost Optimization: Compared to VMware, overall TCO reduced by approximately 40%, easing budget pressure.
Improved Operational Efficiency: A unified cloud platform boosted operational efficiency by over 50%, significantly cutting labor costs.
Enhanced System Stability: SLA for core systems reached 99.99%, greatly minimizing risks.
By deploying the ZStack Cloud platform, the Macau SAR government department successfully replaced VMware and modernized its IT infrastructure. This project fully validated ZStack’s strong advantages in flexibility (on-demand deployment), cost-efficiency (TCO optimization), and reliability (99.99% SLA), setting an exceptional example for digital transformation in public service and large enterprise sectors worldwide.