Nine in 10 VMware customers are exploring alternatives as Broadcom’s licensing changes continue to test how much pain enterprise IT departments will tolerate.
According to Ars Technica, a new survey of 300 organisations using VMware found 90 per cent were considering alternatives because of higher licensing costs. Another 54 per cent pointed to Broadcom ending support for perpetual licence holders as a reason to look elsewhere.
The survey was commissioned by third-party support outfit Rimini Street and conducted by Unisphere Research, so it comes with an obvious commercial interest in unhappy VMware customers. Even so, its findings fit a growing pile of complaints since Broadcom bought VMware, with customers reporting price increases ranging from roughly 100 to 300 per cent and, in some cases, much more.
Cost remains the main concern. Some 73 per cent of respondents said reducing spending was a top priority when deciding what to do with their virtualisation environments.
Escaping VMware is proving less simple. Operational complexity was cited as a barrier by 40 per cent of respondents, while 38 per cent were concerned about managing multiple vendors. Security concerns around a larger attack surface were mentioned by 37 per cent, while the same proportion worried about whether their staff had the necessary skills to manage alternatives.
Rimini Street said: “These findings suggest that while organisations are actively pursuing change, they are also looking for ways to reduce risk and avoid unnecessary disruption.”
Broadcom’s takeover has pushed many customers to reconsider whether depending heavily on a single virtualisation supplier was such a brilliant idea after all. Some 60 per cent of organisations surveyed are considering a multi-hypervisor strategy, while 47 per cent favour a hybrid environment combining hypervisors and containers.
Nearly half, 48 per cent, said they were not planning to move any assets to VMware Cloud Foundation.
Gartner has reached a similar conclusion about the direction of travel. Last month it predicted that by 2029, 55 per cent of enterprises would carry out proofs of concept for alternative distributed hybrid infrastructure products as possible VMware replacements. That compares with 25 per cent in 2026.
Unisphere Research lead analyst Joe McKendrick said customers were looking beyond simply swapping one virtualisation supplier for another.
“For many organisations, that means balancing support for existing environments with new investments designed to improve resilience, security and scalability over time,” he said.
The findings suggest Broadcom has succeeded in making VMware customers think very carefully about virtualisation strategy, although perhaps not in quite the way its sales department would have preferred.
