Since Broadcom acquired VMware, the way VMware software is sold has changed substantially. Perpetual licences are no longer sold, the product range has been consolidated into a small number of subscription bundles, and support renewals for existing perpetual licences have been withdrawn. For many organisations the result is a higher bill at renewal and, in some cases, a bundle that includes far more than they actually use.
The natural reaction is to look for the exit. That may well be the right call, but a virtualisation platform sits underneath almost everything you run, so replacing it is a programme rather than a product swap. The better question is not how to leave VMware, but which platform is right for each of your workloads, and how quickly you can realistically get there.
What has actually changed
Broadcom has moved VMware to a subscription-only model. Instead of a long list of individual products, the portfolio is centred on a few bundles: VMware Cloud Foundation for the full private cloud stack, and VMware vSphere Foundation for smaller and mid-sized environments, with further capabilities sold as add-ons. Organisations with perpetual licences keep the right to use the software, but without an active support contract their access to updates and patches is limited. That is not a sustainable position for a platform that runs production systems.
The changes also reach the hosted VMware services offered by the large cloud providers. Azure VMware Solution, for example, has moved to a model where customers bring their own portable VMware Cloud Foundation subscription for new deployments instead of receiving the licence bundled with the service. Commercial terms vary between customers and partners, so the only reliable number is the quote in front of you.
Staying, but on your terms
Staying is a legitimate option and sometimes the best one. VMware is mature, your team knows it, and your backup, monitoring and automation tools are built around it. If the new terms are acceptable once the estate has been right-sized, staying may be the lowest-risk choice in the short term.
The key is to make it a deliberate decision rather than a default. Before renewal, consolidate clusters and retire hosts you no longer need, check which bundle genuinely matches what you use, and align the length of the renewal with your longer-term plan. A shorter term can buy time to assess alternatives properly without being forced into a rushed migration.
Moving to another hypervisor
There are several mature alternatives, each with different strengths and trade-offs:
- Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure Local: a natural fit for Windows-heavy estates and organisations already invested in Microsoft. Azure Local, formerly Azure Stack HCI, adds management through Azure, but ties your on-premises platform more closely to an Azure subscription.
- Nutanix AHV: a hyperconverged platform with its own hypervisor and migration tooling. It suits organisations replacing whole clusters, often together with a hardware refresh.
- Proxmox VE: an open-source, KVM-based platform with optional paid support. Licence costs are low, but it relies more on in-house Linux skills and has a smaller ecosystem of third-party integrations.
- Other KVM-based platforms: for example Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, which runs virtual machines alongside containers on Kubernetes. It is attractive if a container platform is already part of your plans.
Compare these on more than licence price. Skills, support quality, hardware compatibility and the tools around the platform matter just as much. The cheapest licence can turn out to be expensive if your team has to learn everything from scratch, or if a key backup product does not support the new hypervisor.
Moving to the cloud or modernising instead
For some workloads, the VMware decision is a good moment to ask whether they belong on-premises at all. Rehosting virtual machines to Azure, AWS or Google Cloud removes the hypervisor licence entirely, but brings running costs that need active management. Not every workload suits it: latency-sensitive production systems, large and steady workloads, or data with strict location requirements can be better kept on-premises.
Hosted VMware services such as Azure VMware Solution can act as a bridge. They let you vacate a data centre quickly without re-platforming each virtual machine, and then modernise in the cloud at your own pace. Because you are still running VMware, treat this as a bridge rather than an exit.
Finally, some applications are better containerised or moved to managed platform services than migrated to a new hypervisor, particularly those with active development teams or that are due for a rewrite anyway. This rarely makes sense for a whole estate, but it can shrink the volume that has to be migrated.
How to decide
Most organisations end up with a mix of these options. The way to get there is evidence rather than preference:
- Build a complete inventory: every host, virtual machine, operating system, CPU and memory profile, storage volume and licence entitlement. Much of this can be collected automatically.
- Map dependencies: which systems talk to each other, which must move together, and which rely on VMware-specific features such as vSAN or NSX networking.
- Check your tooling: backup, disaster recovery, monitoring, security and automation tools must all support the target platform. Make backup and disaster recovery part of the plan from day one; it is the area most often discovered too late.
- Be honest about skills: decide who will run the new platform, and whether they need training or partner support.
- Line up the dates: licence and support end dates, hardware refresh cycles and data centre contracts define your realistic window, and whether a short bridging renewal is needed.
- Place each workload: stay, move to a new hypervisor, move to the cloud or modernise, based on cost, risk and effort.
- Migrate in phases: pilot representative workloads first, prove performance, backup and monitoring, then move in planned groups with a tested rollback.
A phased plan also protects your negotiating position. A credible, costed alternative is useful at the renewal table, even if you decide to keep part of the estate on VMware.
How Altechy can help
Our Virtualisation Exit Assessment is a fixed-scope, four-week review. It inventories your virtual machines, hosts, licences and dependencies, compares alternative platforms and cloud options against your workloads and skills, and ends with a recommended target per workload and a migration plan. Where the cloud is part of the answer, our Cloud Strategy & Migration specialists plan and run the move, with Altechy coordinating the partners involved as your single point of contact.
If you would like to talk it through first, book a free 60-minute idea session.