90% of VMware users plan to migrate to alternative platforms

Rimini Street has released an industry survey. Some people may question the objectivity of the survey because Rimini Street mainly provides third-party operation and maintenance support services for VMware and Oracle software, and there is a potential tendency to guide users to replace platforms. However, this survey was conducted by an independent institution throughout, the data is true and reliable, and the conclusion is highly consistent with the results of many recent industry surveys, and has high reference value.

The survey data directly reflects the real mindset of current VMware users. As high as 90% of the surveyed enterprises clearly stated that they are actively testing various VMware alternative solutions. The main reason is the extremely high licensing usage cost. In addition, 54% of the enterprises mentioned that Broadcom has stopped providing official technical support for permanent licensing users, and the old deployment systems lose protection, forcing enterprises to upgrade the virtualization architecture.

Since Broadcom completed the acquisition of VMware, the entire virtualization service business model has been completely rewritten. The official has completely abolished the long-term permanent authorization model for users and fully shifted to subscription-based billing. Some large enterprises have measured that the overall usage cost has skyrocketed by up to 1000%, and the cost increase for most medium and small-sized enterprises has also stabilized within the range of 100% to 300%. Cost control has become the first principle for the adjustment of enterprise virtualization architectures.

Although enterprises have a strong desire to replace VMware, the process has not been smooth. The biggest issue is complexity of operation and maintenance, which affects 40% of respondents largely. The new virtualization platform requires a reconfiguration of the operation and maintenance system. The original operation procedures and management logic are all invalid, and the adaptation cost is extremely high. The second major problem is the challenge of managing multiple vendors. This accounts for 38%. Most enterprises do not replace the system completely at once. During the parallel stage of the new and old platforms, the compatibility and unified control of multiple vendor equipment are extremely difficult.

The risks of security and the shortage of personnel skills are also not to be ignored. Both issues account for 37%. After replacing the platform, the attack surface of the network expands. The new architecture's security protection system needs to be built from scratch. The existing operation team has long adapted to the VMware system and has serious deficiencies in operation skills for the new platform. Additional human resources need to be invested for training.

A large number of enterprises have long adopted a single-vendor virtualization solution for ease of operation and maintenance, but their ability to withstand risks is extremely poor. Once the vendor adjusts pricing or service rules, enterprises can only accept it passively, with no room for negotiation. Most enterprises have realized the drawbacks of relying on a single supplier and have begun to actively break technical bindings, deliberately building a diversified architecture in the local IT environment to enhance system flexibility and fault tolerance.

Facing the problem of user loss, Broadcom launched the VMware Cloud Foundation hybrid cloud platform, attempting to stabilize the existing users through the cloud-based solution. However, this solution has not been recognized by enterprises. 48% of the surveyed enterprises clearly stated that they have no plans to migrate their business assets to this hybrid cloud platform for the time being. The main reasons are high cost and low cost performance.