Thought Leadership
A survey commissioned by Rimini Street among 300 VMware customers shows: Licensing costs drive the search, while complexity slows the switch.
90 percent of organizations using VMware are evaluating alternatives due to rising licensing costs. This is shown by the study “2026 IT Virtualization Survey – What’s Next for VMware Users,” published by the provider Rimini Street. The survey of 300 VMware customers worldwide was conducted by the market research firm Unisphere Research. Rimini Street sells third-party support for VMware, Oracle, and SAP, among others.
Licensing Costs as Main Reason
In addition to licensing costs, 54 percent of respondents cite Broadcom discontinuing support for perpetual license holders as a reason. For 73 percent, cost savings are the top priority when planning their virtualization. Since Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, customers have reported price increases mostly between 100 and 300 percent, and in individual cases up to 1,000 percent.
Complexity as the Biggest Hurdle
40 percent cite operational complexity as the biggest obstacle to switching. This is followed by managing multiple vendors at 38 percent, as well as securing a larger attack surface and a lack of internal team skills at 37 percent each.
“These results suggest that while organizations are actively pursuing change, they are also looking for ways to reduce risks and avoid unnecessary disruption.”
Rimini Street
Multiple Hypervisors and Containers
60 percent of respondents are considering using multiple hypervisors in parallel in the future. 47 percent prefer a hybrid environment of hypervisors and containers to place workloads based on requirements. 48 percent do not plan to migrate systems to VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware’s hybrid cloud platform.
(Editorial Team)
