Bottom line: VMware customers looking to cut licensing costs are considering a mix of hypervisors and containers rather than switching directly to another vendor. Yet managing and securing those environments requires expertise that can complicate the move. The challenge for these companies is to gain more control over their infrastructure without making it harder to run.
A Rimini Street survey of 300 organizations worldwide that use VMware found that 60% are considering a multi-hypervisor strategy. Another 47% favor using both hypervisors and containers, allowing them to choose where to run different workloads. Rimini sells third-party support for VMware and other enterprise software, including Oracle and SAP, so it has a commercial interest in customers reconsidering their support arrangements.
Operational complexity was the most common barrier to changing virtualization strategies, cited by 40% of respondents. Multi-vendor management challenges followed at 38%. An expanded attack surface and staff skills requirements each concerned 37%.
The findings show how difficult it is to reduce reliance on a single vendor. Adding platforms gives organizations more choices, but it also leaves their IT teams with more systems to manage and secure. License savings are only part of that decision.
Interest in combining hypervisors and containers suggests that some respondents want to change how they place workloads, not simply replace VMware with another virtualization supplier. That approach could leave organizations supporting existing VMware systems while introducing other technologies.
The survey does not say how many respondents have completed those changes. Considering multiple hypervisors is not the same as operating them, and a preference for combining containers and hypervisors does not establish how widely that approach is already deployed.
"These findings suggest that while organizations are actively pursuing change, they are also looking for ways to reduce risk and avoid unnecessary disruption," Rimini said.
Cost is the main reason respondents are looking elsewhere. Ninety percent said higher VMware licensing costs prompted them to explore alternatives, while 73% named cost savings as a top priority in their virtualization plans. Another 54% cited Broadcom's decision to end support for perpetual license holders.
Customers have reported substantial price increases since Broadcom took over VMware. Some have described increases of roughly 100 to 300%, while others have reported increases as high as 1,000%. Those accounts show the pressure some customers face, but they do not represent a uniform increase across VMware's installed base.
The survey also found limited appetite among many respondents for moving assets to Cloud Foundation, VMware's hybrid cloud platform. Forty-eight percent said they had no plans to move any assets to it.
Gartner expects more enterprises to test alternatives over the next several years. In its "Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure," released last month, the firm predicted that 55% of enterprises would conduct proofs of concept for alternative distributed hybrid infrastructure products by 2029, up from 25% in 2026.
The forecast covers evaluations of products that could replace VMware-based deployments and support hybrid cloud infrastructure. It does not predict that 55% of enterprises will have left VMware by 2029.
Companies still need to keep critical systems running while they test alternatives, and testing does not mean they are ready to switch. Testing a replacement, deciding which workloads belong on it and managing the transition are separate steps. The survey points to strong interest in change, but also to practical reasons customers may move gradually.