Stable, reliable, and predictable, VMware was the rare piece of enterprise infrastructure IT leaders didn’t have to think about. Until it wasn’t (thanks, Broadcom). From unanticipated licensing increases to changing hardware requirements, many customers are now seeing their carefully planned IT budgets and strategies upended..
In other words, while still a very technically capable product, VMware has suddenly become just another headache to deal with. And the growing operational, financial, and strategic risks tied to Broadcom’s evolving business model may have longtime users eyeing the exits.. While I’ve yet to see a situation where a full rip-and-replace of VMware is the best move, I have found that nearly every organization we talk to can benefit from the kind of certainty that VMware no longer offers, which is why it might be time for a phased de-coupling..
Here are some things to consider as you weigh your options.. – Getty Images. Why organizations feel abandoned by VMware. Over the decades, many IT teams built their operational models, certifications, governance, and tooling around VMware..
So when fees suddenly spiked, licensing models changed, and long-standing assumptions about support and predictability disappeared, the visceral reactions we heard from the CIOs and CTOs who called us were understandable. After all, a core pillar of their infrastructure strategy had suddenly become unpredictable..
And while Broadcom’s strategy with these moves may work for Broadcom, it increases the risks for their customers. Things like SKU simplification and enterprise consolidation are rational business decisions from Broadcom’s perspective. But on the customer side, they lead to reduced pricing predictability, bundled product pressure, and changing engagement models..
In other words, heightened uncertainty (at least for those organizations outside the largest enterprise tier), which is something I have yet to hear any IT leader asking for.. And the concerns are more than just technical. As the growing unpredictability of VMware seeps into more areas – from procurement to vendor concentration to operational continuity – the decision to stay or go becomes a risk management conversation..
Leaving VMware is complex, but complexity already exists. Even amid all the (justified) grumbling I’ve heard from IT leaders, however, VMware remains the industry leader, thanks to its mature feature set, ecosystem integration, operational familiarity, and enterprise-grade reliability.
These are the kind of attributes we generally advocate for with clients, especially when the product still works on a technical level.. And any migration, large or small, comes with challenges: backup and monitoring changes, business continuity redesign, API and tooling dependencies.
For VMware in particular, there’s also the added complexity of the deep automation that many customers have spent decades building around the platform.. But does sticking with VMware somehow equal simplicity? Not really.
Many organizations we work with, after all, already operate heterogeneous environments, running things like Azure, Office 365, Kubernetes, SaaS platforms, and bare-metal infrastructure alongside VMware.. In other words, complexity has long existed in modern IT ecosystems. VMware, in many cases, simply became the operational center of gravity.
But the unanticipated change cycles baked into that center are now forcing many organizations into unwanted change initiatives and opening them up to new hardware risks, such as evolving VCF requirements, accelerated refresh cycles, reduced vendor choice, and infrastructure redesigns unrelated to business value.. Still, the idea of moving away from a foundational part of the infrastructure stack is something that many organizations simply cannot bear, which is how they end up with a growing balance of “transformation debt.” Just as technical debt accumulates from aging systems, transformation debt accumulates from refusing to reassess long-standing operational assumptions..
In other words, many organizations continued to stick with VMware for years because “it just worked,” even if it wasn’t ideal for every workload. But does this stance still make sense as the cost continues to rise?. Still, the idea of moving away from a foundational part of the infrastructure stack is something that many organizations simply cannot bear..
The future is hybrid, selective, and workload-driven. Even if the answer to that question is “no,” it’s worth noting that most organizations looking to move away from VMware are not pursuing a full exit. The platform still works, after all, and a straight lift-and-shift is disruptive..
A more realistic plan is one we’ve encouraged clients to embrace recently. That is, shrinking their VMware footprints, modernizing selectively, retaining VMware where it still delivers value, and placing their workloads on platforms that better fit their operational requirements..
What we love about this kind of measured migration is the opportunity it presents to reevaluate how your organization works. If you’ve been forcing workloads to fit VMware, a migration is an opportunity to find the right platform to fit your workload.. And you don’t have to limit your exploration to your hypervisors.
This is a great opportunity to look at options like; Hyper-V, Proxmox, Kubernetes, managed platforms, hyperscalers, and hybrid cloud architectures. The goal of this search is to find tech solutions that fit the organization’s strategic business needs – which is exactly the kind of common-sense reasoning it sounds like.
And the options that are winning out are those that offer greater predictability, more operational flexibility, and engineering partnerships rather than locked-in platforms.. For example, a healthcare organization we worked with was reluctant to move fully over to a hyperscaler. But they found that transitioning their VMware workloads to Hyper-V better aligned with their existing Microsoft investments and compliance posture..
Their ultimate objective? Operational control and long-term predictability. And they weren’t going to let the supposed complexity of a move away from VMware stand in the way of finding it..
Control and predictability are becoming strategic priorities. For all of the rancor surrounding VMware recently, little has involved the viability of the product itself. Most users would probably agree that the platform is as technically strong as it’s ever been.
But the surrounding commercial and operational environment has fundamentally changed.. That’s causing more and more of the IT leaders we speak with these days to look at their ecosystems from a different angle. Instead of asking “Is VMware a good platform?” they’re beginning to think more in terms of “What level of dependency risk are we willing to accept – and at what cost?”.
For some, the answer to that second question will be to stay on VMware because the value justifies the cost. Others, however, will move toward diversifying their tech stacks to regain some flexibility and predictability. And many will land somewhere in between..
The question: What’s the business cost of ongoing uncertainty?. A lot of factors figure into this decision. What’s worth remembering as you continue to have these discussions and weigh these options is that Broadcom has already changed the rules multiple times over the past few years with things like VCF bundling changes, perpetual license elimination, and hardware compatibility shifts..
For example, clients that previously operated stable five to seven-year hardware lifecycles are increasingly finding themselves forced into earlier refresh decisions due to VCF alignment requirements, OEM qualification limitations, and shrinking compatibility matrices.. That’s tough to plan for.
But one thing they can count on is that the rules will continue to change.. VMware is, of course, still a very technically capable product. And many companies I work with still appreciate its regulatory validation, the skillset of its workforce, its support for virtual appliance vendors, and its automation integrations..
But the question they have to ask now is how they weigh those attributes against their own risk tolerance. Ongoing uncertainty, after all, is not what they signed up for.. More in IT Hardware & Semiconductors.
23 Apr 2026. 17 Mar 2026
