VMware To Lose 35 Percent of Workloads In Three Years (theregister.com) 33
By 2028, Gartner research VP Julia Palmer predicts that VMware will lose 35% of its current workloads as Broadcom's licensing changes and rising costs push customers toward competitors like Nutanix and public clouds. The Register reports: On Wednesday at the analyst firm's Symposium event in Australia, Palmer pointed out that the Broadcom business unit recently tweaked its licensing program so that hyperscalers can no longer sell VMware subscriptions to users of their hosted VMware services. Customers must instead buy direct from Broadcom and use license portability entitlements for any VMware infrastructure they host in hyperscale clouds. Palmer said that decision shows VMware does not consider hyperscalers strategic partners, and she thinks the feeling is mutual. Hyperscalers nevertheless welcome customers who use them to run VMware workloads "because they know over time they will convert you to 'proper cloud'."
Which is one reason she expects VMware will lose so many workloads: Hyperscalers will use their engagements with VMware customers to extol the virtue of public clouds. Palmer thinks VMware customers should heed that pitch. "We are all addicted to hypervisors, and that needs to change," Palmer said, not least because Broadcom's acquisition of VMware shows how lock-in to a virtualization platform can be costly. But she counseled against planning to move all workloads off VMware, as no rival vendor offers a superior platform and a full migration will take three or more years. Palmer instead advised assessing which applications are ripe for modernization and re-platforming, and shifting those -- a job that can take up to a year.
Which is one reason she expects VMware will lose so many workloads: Hyperscalers will use their engagements with VMware customers to extol the virtue of public clouds. Palmer thinks VMware customers should heed that pitch. "We are all addicted to hypervisors, and that needs to change," Palmer said, not least because Broadcom's acquisition of VMware shows how lock-in to a virtualization platform can be costly. But she counseled against planning to move all workloads off VMware, as no rival vendor offers a superior platform and a full migration will take three or more years. Palmer instead advised assessing which applications are ripe for modernization and re-platforming, and shifting those -- a job that can take up to a year.
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An analyst's job is to make projections. Gartner aren't known for being the most prescient analysts to put it mildly, but in this case they're just stating the obvious.
Re:not fact - prediction (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, it's a prediction, but it's realistic too. When everything gets more expensive you look to cut costs.
We're in the process of dumping it - will be off it in six months or so.
We're in the process of dumping Oracle (fuck off for wanting to bill us for processing power we're not using for your SW) for the same kind of reason.
We have folks convinced to dump these expensive options when there are cheaper (and when possible mature Open Source) options for things.
They make it expensive enough that it's worth the cost of migrating - then it's time to migrate. Simple as that.
Wow! (Score:2)
Sites (Score:2)
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It is possible and likely that people are slowly migrating away and it will take some time.
Re: Wow! (Score:2)
It is generally very hard to migrate off any virtualization platform without new hardware. That generally limits the speed at which you can migrate off to hardware refresh cycles.
They'll just buy out the competitors (Score:1)
Initially they won't care because they're going to be making lots of money off of the people who can't move and who are paying through the nose.
Eventually one of the competitors will get to the point where they have enough customers that they can build out tools to compete.
And then they will either buy up the
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VMWare has not had an improvement to its platform for years. The only thing was their Apps or docker instancing. Doesnt mean they dont have a lot of great tools, but they havent really done a lot.
Newer platforms provide more, and are cheaper.
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The hypervisor enforced software defined networking seems to me a major improvement. For all the bashing of VLANs from the zero trust crowd, they often offer little alternative except massive attack surfaces. Putting the rules inside the hypervisor gives some needed separation from the multitude of OS root exploit chains.
Broadcom has the big fish locked in to no net loss (Score:2)
Broadcom has the big fish locked in to no net loss
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Stupid? More than double the revenue per customer with only 35% loss of customers?
That's more revenue and even more profit.
Seems to be working out very well for them.
35% seems⦠(Score:2)
Rather low. Either is is a very conservative number, or color me surprised how many companies out there are willingly waiting to be extorted.
Re: Simple Cost Benefit and Risk. (Score:1)
If your expensive trained professionals need expensive retraining to use a different virtualization solution they are in my view not up to the job in the first place and you need to let go of them.
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I imagine some of them were able to negotiate the extortion fees down to equal whatever the migration costs would be.
And those organizations are probably just waiting for the next contract renewal or other inflection point to pull the trigger on migration.
Proxmox (Score:2)
I'm replacing our VMWare systems with open source Proxmox as the time and budget comes to replace hardware.1 out of 3 systems replaced and I like it so far!
Re: Proxmox (Score:2)
Hah just migrated off VSphere to Proxmox on the same hardware. Something of a crazy scheme but the license increase made it the only sane choice.
There are so many better options (Score:3)
VirtualBox is completely free and open source, as is KVM, Xen, and QEMU. Other free (but not open source) options include Microsoft Hyper-V. There is no reason to pay VMWare's crazy prices.
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virtualbox is good but irrelevant to this conversation as it's not used in the enterprise so vmware doesn't care about it.
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Huh? I've personally used VirtualBox in an enterprise context. I'm not sure where you got your information.
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Fine, I suppose it matters who big the enterprise is.
Microsoft Hypervisor does offer a true alternative. I don't know for sure about the other open source ones, I don't have direct experience.
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Might want to take a look at the license. Oracle is getting antsy to go after enterprises using VirtualBox. Not VirtualBox itself, but the extension pack. They're starting to enforce the licensing where enterprises get 7 days to evaluate the extension pack license and then need to pay up.
(The extension pack adds USB 3 and RDP support which is not included in the open source VirtualBox).
Also, VMWare Wor
expected (Score:2)
there is no competition to VMWare, only your ability to afford it or not.
I suspect the lost some clients, so a cut in workforce is the results. Besides, the AI is taking over more and more low level support
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The hyperscalers have their own solutions, if you can afford it you don't need vmware.
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No competition to VMware?!
What about Nutanix and Proxmox?!