migration continues
Broadcom introduced changes to VMware that are not particularly suited to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and Gartner previously predicted that 35 percent of VMware workloads would shift elsewhere by 2028.
CloudBolt’s survey also examined how respondents are shifting workloads from VMware. Currently, 36 percent of participants said they have removed 1-24 percent of their environment from VMware. Another 32 percent said they had migrated 25-49 percent; 10 percent said they have shifted 50-74 percent of the workload; And 2 percent have shifted 75 percent or more of the workload. Five percent of respondents said they had not migrated from VMware at all.
Among migrated workloads, 72 percent moved to public cloud infrastructure as a service, followed by Microsoft’s Hyper-V/Azure stack (43 percent of respondents).
Overall, 86 percent of respondents are “actively reducing their VMware footprint,” CloudBolt’s report said.
“The fear has subsided, but the pressure hasn’t gone away – and most teams are now taking practical steps to create leverage and optionality – even if for some that includes realizing that a portion of their assets will never move away from VMware,” Mark Zemble, chief marketing officer at CloudBolt, said in a statement.
While bundled products, fewer options, resellers and higher prices make it hard to justify VMware for many people, especially SMB customers, migration is a lengthy process with its own costs, including time spent researching options and building relevant skills. CloudBolt reported multi-platform complexity (52 percent) and skills gaps (33 percent) topped the list of migration challenges.
“As organizations move away from VMware, they inherit the operational burden of managing multiple platforms with different operational and governance models,” the report said.
While companies determine the best ways to limit their reliance on VMware, Broadcom can still make money from smaller customers that it doesn’t see necessary for the long term.
“Their strategy was not to retain every customer,” the Cloudbolt report said. “This was to maximize the value of those who are still on the platform while the market is slowly diversifying. The model assumes churn and is designed to make the economics work anyway. Broadcom has done the math – and they’re OK with it.”
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