Ninety percent of VMware users are exploring alternative virtualization strategies following Broadcom's acquisition and the resulting licensing cost increases, according to a survey by Rimini Street released today.
The study of 300 global organizations found that customers have faced cost increases ranging from 100 to 300 percent since Broadcom's takeover, with some reporting hikes as high as 1,000 percent. The move also prompted Broadcom to end support for perpetual licenses—a decision cited by 54 percent of respondents as a reason to seek alternatives.
Cost savings emerged as the primary driver of defection: 73 percent identified it as a top priority in their virtualization roadmap decisions. But the path to migration is not frictionless. Forty percent of organizations cited operational complexity as a barrier, 38 percent pointed to multi-vendor management challenges, and 37 percent flagged security concerns around expanded attack surfaces. Another 37 percent cited insufficient team skills.
The survey captures a broader shift in enterprise cloud strategy. Sixty percent of respondents are now considering multi-hypervisor deployments to reduce vendor lock-in—a direct response to Broadcom's consolidation play. Forty-seven percent are exploring hybrid IT environments that combine hypervisors with containers for workload optimization.
Perhaps most telling: 48 percent of surveyed organizations are not planning to migrate any assets to VMware's Cloud Foundation platform, Broadcom's hybrid cloud offering. The data suggests enterprises are building bespoke, multi-platform environments rather than accepting the vendor's modernization roadmap.
Gartner analyst Tony Harvey previously characterized the Broadcom acquisition as a watershed moment for VMware's installed base. "Clients viewed it as a wake-up call to how dependent they had become on a single vendor," Harvey said, "and are looking for more diversity in their on-premises environments."
For Broadcom, the trade-off is stark: higher per-customer margins today against a fragmenting customer base tomorrow. The economics of enterprise software lock-in assume stickiness; when pricing triggers wholesale reevaluation of architecture, the moat erodes quickly.
