Most VMware Users Still 'Actively Reducing Their VMware Footprint,' Survey Finds (arstechnica.com) 26
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: More than two years after Broadcom took over VMware, the virtualization company's customers are still grappling with higher prices, uncertainty, and the challenges of reducing vendor lock-in. Today, CloudBolt Software released a report, "The Mass Exodus That Never Was: The Squeeze Is Just Beginning," that provides insight into those struggles. CloudBolt is a hybrid cloud management platform provider that aims to identify VMware customers' pain points so it can sell them relevant solutions. In the report, CloudBolt said it surveyed 302 IT decision-makers (director-level or higher) at North American companies with at least 1,000 employees in January. The survey is far from comprehensive, but it offers a look at the obstacles these users face.
Broadcom closed its VMware acquisition in November 2023, and last month, 88 percent of survey respondents still described the change as "disruptive." Per the survey, the most cited drivers of disruption were price increases (named by 89 percent of respondents), followed by uncertainty about Broadcom's plans (85 percent), support quality concerns (78 percent), Broadcom shifting VMware from perpetual licenses to subscriptions (72 percent), changes to VMware's partner program (68 percent), and the forced bundling of products (65 percent).
When Broadcom bought VMware, some customers shared horror stories about receiving quotes that showed prices increasing by as much as 1,000 percent. CloudBolt's survey paints a more modest picture. Fourteen percent of respondents said their VMware costs have at least doubled, while 12 percent reported increases of 50-99 percent, 33 percent reported increases of 24-49 percent, and 31 percent reported increases of less than 25 percent. Despite survey participants suggesting smaller price hikes than originally anticipated under Broadcom, companies are still struggling with the pricing changes. Eighty-five percent are concerned that VMware will become even more expensive, according to CloudBolt's survey. [...]
CloudBolt's survey also examined how respondents are migrating workloads off of VMware. Currently, 36 percent of participants said they migrated 1-24 percent of their environment off of VMware. Another 32 percent said that they have migrated 25-49 percent; 10 percent said that they've migrated 50-74 percent of workloads; and 2 percent have migrated 75 percent or more of workloads. Five percent of respondents said that they have 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.
Broadcom closed its VMware acquisition in November 2023, and last month, 88 percent of survey respondents still described the change as "disruptive." Per the survey, the most cited drivers of disruption were price increases (named by 89 percent of respondents), followed by uncertainty about Broadcom's plans (85 percent), support quality concerns (78 percent), Broadcom shifting VMware from perpetual licenses to subscriptions (72 percent), changes to VMware's partner program (68 percent), and the forced bundling of products (65 percent).
When Broadcom bought VMware, some customers shared horror stories about receiving quotes that showed prices increasing by as much as 1,000 percent. CloudBolt's survey paints a more modest picture. Fourteen percent of respondents said their VMware costs have at least doubled, while 12 percent reported increases of 50-99 percent, 33 percent reported increases of 24-49 percent, and 31 percent reported increases of less than 25 percent. Despite survey participants suggesting smaller price hikes than originally anticipated under Broadcom, companies are still struggling with the pricing changes. Eighty-five percent are concerned that VMware will become even more expensive, according to CloudBolt's survey. [...]
CloudBolt's survey also examined how respondents are migrating workloads off of VMware. Currently, 36 percent of participants said they migrated 1-24 percent of their environment off of VMware. Another 32 percent said that they have migrated 25-49 percent; 10 percent said that they've migrated 50-74 percent of workloads; and 2 percent have migrated 75 percent or more of workloads. Five percent of respondents said that they have 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.
yup (Score:5, Insightful)
Its clear broadcom wants the IP, not to maintain the software. they are an IP holding company, not innovative at all.
Personally Nutanix is a great option, it has one big hangup, not all OVAs work on it. if the OVA requires an answer file to work, then it will not work.
It uses QCOW2 file format, which is converted by Nutanix Move application, and as long as you have root access to the VM, for the drivers to be installed, then you will be fine.
I have asked Nutanix to reach out to vendors to provide them a platform to create these things. I hope they do so, as this is the only hang up with them.
Their API is pretty great, and their UI is going through changes, but is progressing. Abilities wise, its about VMWare 6.0, but they are working hard on it.
Not just companies, individuals too (Score:2, Interesting)
No company wants to ...
Individuals too. I've been using VMWare on Mac for over 15 years. Windows VMs, Linux VMs, even macOS VMs with over versions of macOS. One machine to develop for and test all three platforms.
However I recently switched to Parallels. A Windows VM, a Linux VM, and a macOS VM with the older version of the OS.
As a special bonus, since the new Mac is ARM, I get to run ARM Windows and ARM Linux. Both run really well.
I'm happy with the switch to Parallels. My currently licensed VMWare can sit on the old Inte
Re:Not just companies, individuals too (Score:4)
For home labs and smaller businesses, Proxmox seems to be just fine.
Re: (Score:3)
However I recently switched to Parallels. A Windows VM, a Linux VM, and a macOS VM with the older version of the OS..
My brain read that last part as a joke and added "walked into a bar.." ;-)
Re: yup (Score:5, Interesting)
No, they wanted money.
Broadcom did some basic math when they bought VMWare. X was the cost of the acquisition, and Y was how much money they'd make by overcharging VM Ware's existing customers before those customers actually left.
VMWare knew companies would leave if they jacked up the prices, but they didn't care, because they also knew Y would ultimately wind up being greater than X by the time everyone actually left (changing virtualization platforms doesn't happen overnight, and companies tend to drag their feet on changes like these).
How do I know this? Because it's Broadcom's playbook: they've done the exact same thing with their previous acquisitions.
So again, it's not about IP, though I'm sure that helps them ... it's about $Y > $X.
Re: (Score:1)
That's a lot of work just to break even or make a feel minor $$ before everyone leaves your platform. I'm sure bigger brains than mine figured out a way to make money off this, but you'd think there would be easier pickings than buy product, squeeze it dry, then move on to next product.
Re: (Score:2)
We started to kick them to the curb right before they sold to Broadcom as it was obvious that their business model equated to "Fuck the SMB Market"...which also included small enterprises like us. I remember being on a renewal call with one of their sales reps and my director told them "You guys can fuck off with those price increases. We're not renewing". We then began to ditch them hard and fast. It was very liberating
Re: (Score:3)
We started to kick them to the curb right before they sold to Broadcom as it was obvious that their business model equated to "Fuck the SMB Market"...which also included small enterprises like us. I remember being on a renewal call with one of their sales reps and my director told them "You guys can fuck off with those price increases. We're not renewing". We then began to ditch them hard and fast. It was very liberating
To be fair, they're also saying "fuck the large enterprise and MSP market" as well.
It's just a lot harder to move several thousand VMs. Especially with the price of RAM.
Sayonara (Score:3)
A lot of companies are certainly kicking them to the curb. There are other options. The mobility and remote access pieces wound up with KKR as Omnissa. I'm continuing to consume those as KKR understands they'll never get their return on investment if they chase away their customers.
Rug pull (Score:3)
But that only lasts until people can move. Long enough to earn Tan a really nice chunk of change, and probably also long enough to make VMWare a tiny niche player.
Other type 1 hypervisors (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Quick question - are there any Type 1 hypervisors based on any of the BSDs, as opposed to Linux?
The BSD's use something called Bhyve. I was pretty stable on TrueNAS Core when I used it, but not very feature rich. I only ran Linux VM's, so don't consider this an endorsement.
https://bhyve.org/ [bhyve.org]
T
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Xen is Linux-based.
Big targets (Score:3)
surveyed 302 IT decision-makers (director-level or higher) at North American companies with at least 1,000 employees
This is why they aren't getting as extreme of an answer on the nature of price increase. Broadcom was very explicit in the acquisition that the large orgs are the target customers that they are trying to keep. They are already they are the most locked in with the highest return on investment. So as long those frogs slowly boil, they can make back their investment plus some.
The smaller orgs are the ones hitting the higher price increases as replacing a lower entitlement with a full suite subscription hurts a lot when you don't already have the full suite already. Either losing a minimally profitable account or converting it to a highly profitable one are valid plays when the game is value extraction rather than long term market dominance. Because that extracted value can be used to acquire the next CA or Symantec and begin again.
Free yourself (Score:3)
Do yourself a favor and look at XCP-NG/Xen Orchestra and ProxMox. If your needs fit, both are: open source, run under open source operating systems, free, and work quite well. And both offer paid support if you need it.
https://xcp-ng.org/ [xcp-ng.org] https://xen-orchestra.com/ [xen-orchestra.com]
https://www.proxmox.com/ [proxmox.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I've found proxmox quite nice. Almost everyone else doing linux virtualization leans on libvirt, and proxmox decided to simplify and prioritize less awkward abstraction and so I find it more straightforward of an architecture than the usual "something over libvirt over qemu" approach.
Re: (Score:3)
>"Almost everyone else doing linux virtualization leans on libvirt, and proxmox decided to simplify and prioritize less awkward abstraction and so I find it more straightforward of an architecture than the usual "something over libvirt over qemu" approach."
Indeed. Both XCP-NG/Xen Orchestra and Proxmox are much better at supporting larger needs. XCP-NG has a long history of solid virtualization and Xen Orchestra makes managing it a dream. Proxmox takes a different approach, but is very powerful as well
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Free yourself (Score:2)
It's gone. (Score:3)
We dumped it. Over 100 physical servers all went to Proxmox. It's been just fine. Should have honestly done it sooner.
CIsco UC applications Are now on Nutanix (Score:2)
get off of die with it (Score:2)
HA! (Score:1)
Broadcom can kiss my fat hairy a**. Moving all three of my datacenters out of VMWare forever.