Since Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware in late 2023, licensing has moved to subscriptions sold mainly as bundles such as VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation, with per-core pricing. Many organisations have seen significant cost changes at renewal. Whatever your situation, it is a good moment to make a deliberate decision rather than simply renewing.
Start with an honest assessment
Before choosing a direction, gather the facts: how many hosts, cores and VMs you run; utilisation; which VMware features you actually depend on (vMotion, DRS, vSAN, NSX, SRM, Horizon); your renewal date; and the skills of your team. Many estates are over-provisioned — right-sizing alone can change the economics.
Option 1: Stay and optimise
For organisations with deep VMware investment, staying can be the lowest-risk path. Reduce licensed cores by consolidating hosts and retiring idle VMs, and make full use of the bundled capabilities you now pay for — a VCF subscription includes components many customers previously bought separately.
Best for: large, stable estates with complex dependencies and little appetite for change.
Option 2: VMware in the public cloud
Managed VMware services such as Azure VMware Solution and Google Cloud VMware Engine let you move workloads to the cloud without re-platforming them, often as a step toward modernisation. Licensing and purchasing routes for these services have changed alongside VMware’s, so confirm current terms with the provider.
Best for: data-centre exits on a deadline, or a bridge to cloud-native services.
Option 3: Move to an alternative hypervisor
Mature alternatives include Nutanix AHV, Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure Local, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, Proxmox VE and others. Each differs in management tooling, ecosystem support, backup integrations and skills required.
Best for: organisations that want to keep workloads on-premises but reduce dependency and cost. Plan for migration tooling, testing and team training.
Option 4: Re-platform to cloud-native
Some workloads are better served by modernising than by moving VMs: containerising applications onto Kubernetes, adopting managed databases, or replacing custom systems with SaaS. This takes longer but removes the hypervisor question entirely for those workloads.
Best for: applications already due for modernisation, and organisations with strong DevOps capability.
Option 5: A deliberate hybrid
Most organisations end up with a mix: keep a right-sized VMware core for critical, complex workloads; move suitable VMs to an alternative platform or the cloud; and modernise selected applications. The key is to decide workload by workload, based on cost, risk and business value.
How to decide
| Option | Speed | Disruption | Long-term flexibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stay & optimise | Fast | Low | Low |
| VMware in the cloud | Fast–medium | Low–medium | Medium |
| Alternative hypervisor | Medium | Medium | Medium–high |
| Cloud-native | Slow | High | High |
| Hybrid | Phased | Managed | High |
Our VMware specialists run vendor-neutral assessments that model the cost and risk of each option for your estate, then execute the plan you choose.
Frequently asked questions
What changed with VMware licensing under Broadcom?
VMware moved from perpetual licences to subscriptions, sold mainly as bundled offerings such as VMware Cloud Foundation and vSphere Foundation, priced per core. Many customers saw cost changes at renewal.
What are the main alternatives to VMware?
Common alternatives include Nutanix AHV, Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure Local, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and Proxmox VE, as well as moving workloads to public cloud or cloud-native platforms.
How long does a VMware migration take?
It depends on estate size and complexity. Small environments can move in weeks; large estates are usually migrated in waves over several months.