With Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, the market is in flux. Gartner suspects that “devirtualization” will be on the rise in the near future. Moving to VMware alternatives is also on the cards, although that’s not feasible for most organizations for several years.
Gartner’s 2024 Hype Cycle for Data Center Infrastructure Technologies estimates VMware’s price increase by a factor of two or three. However, we’ve heard about more significant hikes on several occasions, as was evident in our conversation with Jeff Ready, CEO of VMware alternative Scale Computing. His company is already seeing a huge increase in demand since Broadcom raised prices.
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Those price increases stem from Broadcom’s consolidation of dozens of VMware components into two core products: VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation. All individual components have been absorbed into one solution or the other or removed from the equation altogether, as was the case for the former VMware End-User Computing (EUC) side that now goes by the name of Omnissa. For VMware customers, the changes mean that they can no longer opt for perpetual licensing or just the ESXi hypervisor.
Also read: VMware customers want to migrate away – not all of them can
De- or revirtualization?
Gartner points to two options due to the changed VMware policy. The first is devirtualization, or a return to bare-metal infrastructure with all the cost and complexity that entails. The other option is a move to Nutanix, Scale Computing or other alternatives, with some continuity of approach to existing IT infrastructure despite various adaptations and a need for some extent of reskilling.
Devirtualization will take some time, Gartner believes. Only 1 percent of all organizations could venture the switch already, while others will have to wait five to 10 years for this migration path to mature. Revirtualization, or switching to a new hypervisor, could already be done by 5-20 percent of organizations.
Also read: Red Hat lures potential VMware escapees with migration discounts