The changes wrought by Broadcom’s takeover give organizations the opportunity to remake their infrastructures for the better.
By: Dave Dimlich
President of SD3IT
More than two and a half years after Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, the dust still hasn’t completely settled, but organizations should no longer be worried about what hypervisor they are going to use to replace VMware. They should be thinking about how to use this ground-shifting opportunity to modernize their infrastructure to ensure performance gains while saving on costs.
How to move forward with virtualization is a big decision. It affects everything from cybersecurity and disaster recovery to artificial intelligence readiness, hybrid cloud adoption and long-term operational resilience. Organizations that rethink their infrastructures, looking to reduce the complexity of taking a more varied approach while eliminating license uncertainty and improving performance, can position themselves for the future as the enterprise continues to evolve. Focusing solely on replacing VMware risks bringing old challenges into a new environment.
IT teams have a lot of options in this transition, including open-source hypervisors, alternative hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platforms and cloud-native solutions. They should move carefully, planning for a virtualization architecture that balances mission requirements against costs and operational risks.
The Conversation on Virtualization Has Changed
When Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware in late 2023, most of the discussion centered on licensing. The move to subscription-only pricing, bundled offerings and higher licensing costs left many organizations wondering whether VMware still fit their operational and financial requirements. Smaller and midsize organizations wondered whether they could afford VMware at all.
As Inside the Mission pointed out, many organizations saw substantial price increases while others struggled with uncertainty about VMware’s long-term direction. The result wasn’t a mass exodus but something far more practical. Organizations began reducing their VMware footprint one workload at a time rather than abandoning the platform altogether. A CloudBolt survey found that 86% of respondents were reducing their use of VMware, though not abandoning it completely. The transition hasn’t been entirely smooth. Although 60% reported greater confidence in their VMware strategies entering 2026 than they had in 2024, 63% said they had changed those strategies at least twice along the way.
That piecemeal shift, with occasional readjustments, reflects the choices organizations are facing. VMware remains an excellent platform for many mission-critical applications. Its mature management tools, broad ecosystem support and familiarity still make it a good choice in many circumstances. But the idea that every workload belongs on the same virtualization platform no longer holds true. Organizations are building more flexible environments that combine traditional virtual machines with containers, hybrid cloud resources, edge infrastructure and specialized platforms designed for specific operational needs. Instead of asking whether VMware should stay or go, IT leaders are asking where each workload belongs.
Migration Isn’t Modernization
Moving on from VMware is one thing, but treating the migration as a technology replacement project would be a mistake. Replacing one hypervisor with another may solve licensing concerns, but it doesn’t necessarily solve the operational challenges that accumulated over years of infrastructure growth.
Many organizations are running environments shaped by years of mergers, changing mission priorities, budget constraints and evolving security requirements. Virtual machines were added as new projects emerged and storage was expanded to support new applications. Networks became more complex and cloud services appeared alongside on-premises infrastructure and continued to grow. Edge computing took its place.
A straightforward migration, simply moving those same workloads onto a different virtualization platform, can just “lift and shift” the same complexity to a new environment. Modernization, on the other hand, can bring different, better results.
Modernization starts by asking whether existing infrastructure still supports the organization’s mission instead of assuming every workload should remain exactly where it is today. Some applications may continue running most effectively on VMware. Others may benefit from platforms such as Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV or Proxmox. Modern applications may belong on Kubernetes or other container platforms. Certain workloads may make more sense in the public cloud, while others remain on dedicated infrastructure because of performance, security or compliance requirements.
The objective isn’t to eliminate VMware but to build an infrastructure strategy that aligns technology with operational requirements.
Start With Workloads, not Platforms
Every application serves a different purpose and has different operational requirements. Some may demand extremely high availability, while others may process highly sensitive information and still others may need the flexibility to scale quickly or integrate with cloud-native services.
Those differences should drive infrastructure decisions. A good place to start is with a workload assessment evaluating business criticality, application dependencies, performance requirements, security obligations and operational costs. That approach can enable better technology decisions while preventing teams from making the common mistake of migrating technical debt instead of eliminating it.
Starting with operational requirements can help you create a more resilient, flexible environment, which is becoming increasingly important as organizations prepare for the next phase of digital transformation, which always tends to arrive sooner than expected.
Virtualization, once viewed primarily as an infrastructure decision, is today an architectural decision that influences nearly every aspect of an organization’s technology strategy. Consider how much has changed in just the past few years. AI is driving demand for GPU-dense computing environments. Hybrid cloud has become the standard operating model for many enterprises. Edge computing continues to expand as organizations push processing closer to users and mission locations. Cybersecurity has evolved from protecting individual systems to ensuring operational resilience across distributed environments.
None of these initiatives exist in a vacuum. Infrastructure decisions made today will determine how easily organizations can adopt AI, automate operations, strengthen cyber resilience and support future mission requirements. A virtualization strategy that made perfect sense five years ago may no longer provide the flexibility organizations need moving forward.
Simplicity Should Remain the Goal
Ironically, building a more flexible infrastructure can sometimes make the environment more complex. Running VMware alongside Hyper-V, Kubernetes, public cloud resources and edge infrastructure introduces new challenges. Storage, networking, security, backup, identity management and monitoring must all work together across multiple platforms.
Without careful planning, organizations solving one problem can create several new ones in the process. That’s why successful modernization efforts begin with architecture rather than technology selection.
Integration planning should identify application dependencies, data flows, security requirements and operational processes before workloads begin moving. Governance models should ensure that new platforms fit within existing compliance and cybersecurity frameworks. Automation should simplify operations rather than introduce another collection of management tools.
At SD3IT, we work with a wide array of partners to design solutions that bring together compute, storage, networking, cybersecurity and cloud services into a cohesive operational environment. For example, a solution such as HPE Morpheus can manage both VMware and other hypervisors from a single control plane. And Rancher Prime can unify control of both containers and virtual machines. Our partner ecosystem is ready to handle even the most unique environments.
No two organizations have identical requirements; the right answer depends on mission priorities, compliance obligations, performance expectations, long-term business objectives and mission requirements. We focus on the mission first, helping organizations determine which workloads should remain where they are, which should migrate and which should be modernized altogether.
VMware’s Acquisition Creates Opportunities
Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware was a bombshell disruption to the virtualization market. The impact is still being felt, but it’s time to move on.
In many respects, the acquisition just accelerated changes already underway as organizations adopted hybrid infrastructure, cloud-native applications, automation and AI-enabled operations. The licensing changes gave IT leaders an opportunity to step back and evaluate whether their existing infrastructure still reflected where their organizations were headed.
The organizations that emerge strongest from this transition will be those that simplify operations, improve resilience, reduce unnecessary complexity and build an infrastructure strategy fully aligned with future mission requirements.
About SD3IT
SD3IT (Solution Driven, Designed and Delivered Technology) helps government and commercial organizations modernize mission-critical IT through integrated infrastructure, cybersecurity, cloud and edge solutions. We work closely with leading technology partners to design, deploy and support secure, resilient environments that align with operational requirements, compliance mandates and long-term business objectives.