End of an Era: Why Enterprise is Bailing En Masse from VMware
The arena of tech promises constant change, heady innovation that propels us forward, new entrants delivering solutions that were beyond imagination a few months ago, and of course, era-ending transitions when companies that were foundational pillars somehow collapse. We’ve seen and covered this last narrative as it’s played out over the last few years with Intel, the once North Star of compute platform definition. Now, a new behemoth has emerged that may be following in Intel’s unforced error footsteps – VMware.
VMware…the inventors of modern virtualization. VMware…the foundation of the private cloud. VMware…every IT manager’s best friend. That VMware.
We knew that when Broadcom acquired VMware, we’d see a transformation of the business. Hock Tan certainly carries a reputation with him of financial success and efficient operations. Many wondered how this approach, effective in hardware component delivery, would fit with v-admins. As the story has evolved, we’ve seen business decisions that have disrupted the long-held trust that enterprise IT has had in VMware for decades. Changes in licensing agreements, ramps in core-licensing minimums, and more have rolled out from new leadership, and with it a growing sense of uncertainty whether VMware can be trusted as a foundation of private cloud moving forward.
At TechArena, we’ve been watching this story evolve and wanted to check in on enterprise sentiment. We conducted a survey of IT operators at Dell Tech World, a terrific opportunity to get to the heart of what enterprises are thinking about data center computing, to see how IT organizations were viewing this landscape, and, more importantly, what they planned to do about it. What we found was eye-opening, even given our suspicions that VMware’s rock-solid hold on enterprise was wavering.
Active Migration is Happening
IT respondents reflected that migration is absolutely a priority in many organizations, with 10% of respondents having already migrated off of VMware solutions and a whopping 28% currently planning a migration. Given that 19% of respondents claimed that they weren’t VMware users, this reflects almost half of those using VMware historically within some state of migration.
Migration Signals Modernization
So what will drive IT destinations? In looking at top feature priorities for IT deployments, two items bubble to the top: 31% of respondents signaled that support for a wide selection of IT infrastructure was a top criterion, and an additional 25% tapped integration of cloud-native features as essential. While migration is very much a move from a platform, the move to what’s up next will be driven by full features that will support modern private clouds. This provides some insight into how IT organizations dislike anything that feels like lock-in and want options for modern integration of features like containers that will propel the advancement of IT operations and provide new inroads for adoption of new classes of applications like enterprise’s expected ramp of AI.
So what’s the TechArena take? As Keith Townsend recently quipped, “there’s nothing wrong with VMware”, and from a narrow view of technology capability, he’s absolutely correct. What’s disrupting this industry stalwart is a customer orientation that is out of pace with enterprise expectations, opening up the door for others in the industry like Microsoft, Nutanix, Platform9, and Red Hat to gain market share and customer loyalty. I’d expect the next two years to show a rapid advancement of active migrations and equally importantly modernization of enterprise clouds. We’ll be watching this space acutely for signs of the next major industry leader in the private cloud domain to take form. Watch for more TechArena coverage on all things cloud this week as I’ll be reporting from Cloud Field Day. Can’t wait!
The arena of tech promises constant change, heady innovation that propels us forward, new entrants delivering solutions that were beyond imagination a few months ago, and of course, era-ending transitions when companies that were foundational pillars somehow collapse. We’ve seen and covered this last narrative as it’s played out over the last few years with Intel, the once North Star of compute platform definition. Now, a new behemoth has emerged that may be following in Intel’s unforced error footsteps – VMware.
VMware…the inventors of modern virtualization. VMware…the foundation of the private cloud. VMware…every IT manager’s best friend. That VMware.
We knew that when Broadcom acquired VMware, we’d see a transformation of the business. Hock Tan certainly carries a reputation with him of financial success and efficient operations. Many wondered how this approach, effective in hardware component delivery, would fit with v-admins. As the story has evolved, we’ve seen business decisions that have disrupted the long-held trust that enterprise IT has had in VMware for decades. Changes in licensing agreements, ramps in core-licensing minimums, and more have rolled out from new leadership, and with it a growing sense of uncertainty whether VMware can be trusted as a foundation of private cloud moving forward.
At TechArena, we’ve been watching this story evolve and wanted to check in on enterprise sentiment. We conducted a survey of IT operators at Dell Tech World, a terrific opportunity to get to the heart of what enterprises are thinking about data center computing, to see how IT organizations were viewing this landscape, and, more importantly, what they planned to do about it. What we found was eye-opening, even given our suspicions that VMware’s rock-solid hold on enterprise was wavering.
Active Migration is Happening
IT respondents reflected that migration is absolutely a priority in many organizations, with 10% of respondents having already migrated off of VMware solutions and a whopping 28% currently planning a migration. Given that 19% of respondents claimed that they weren’t VMware users, this reflects almost half of those using VMware historically within some state of migration.
Migration Signals Modernization
So what will drive IT destinations? In looking at top feature priorities for IT deployments, two items bubble to the top: 31% of respondents signaled that support for a wide selection of IT infrastructure was a top criterion, and an additional 25% tapped integration of cloud-native features as essential. While migration is very much a move from a platform, the move to what’s up next will be driven by full features that will support modern private clouds. This provides some insight into how IT organizations dislike anything that feels like lock-in and want options for modern integration of features like containers that will propel the advancement of IT operations and provide new inroads for adoption of new classes of applications like enterprise’s expected ramp of AI.
So what’s the TechArena take? As Keith Townsend recently quipped, “there’s nothing wrong with VMware”, and from a narrow view of technology capability, he’s absolutely correct. What’s disrupting this industry stalwart is a customer orientation that is out of pace with enterprise expectations, opening up the door for others in the industry like Microsoft, Nutanix, Platform9, and Red Hat to gain market share and customer loyalty. I’d expect the next two years to show a rapid advancement of active migrations and equally importantly modernization of enterprise clouds. We’ll be watching this space acutely for signs of the next major industry leader in the private cloud domain to take form. Watch for more TechArena coverage on all things cloud this week as I’ll be reporting from Cloud Field Day. Can’t wait!
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