Broadcom’s decision to revamp 56 VMware offerings has created a sudden interest in competing virtualization solutions. Modifications to its licensing models, feature availability, and support structures are forcing organizations to evaluate whether to continue with VMware — or migrate to an alternative platform.
For example, VMware’s new bundles, like vSphere Standard and vSphere Essentials Plus, have limited support for advanced features. Now, organizations that rely on components like vSAN are forced to spend more on upgrades, requiring additional licenses for things like VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) or vSphere Foundation (VVF).
These drastic changes complicate an organization’s ability to adhere to its previous licensing and deployment strategies, leaving many VMware clients feeling that their needs are no longer being met.
As a result, there is a growing industry-wide movement toward the products offered by VMware’s competitors.
Every organization that wants to modernize its virtual hosts should familiarize itself with Gartner’s 5 R’s:
Rehosting, Refactoring, Replatforming, Rebuilding, & Replacing.
While rebuilding and replacing are fairly self-explanatory, the other strategies — refactoring, replatforming, and rehosting — warrant a closer look.
The rehosting process, often called “lift and shift,” involves moving an app from its current environment to a cloud environment without making any changes. It’s a straightforward and quick migration approach, but it typically doesn’t fully take advantage of cloud-native capabilities.
Replatforming, on the other hand, focuses on optimizing the application to perform well on its new cloud platform and making all the necessary changes to accomplish this. Although replatforming requires more effort than rehosting, it offers greater benefits in terms of cloud-native optimization.
While replatforming is more involved than rehosting, it’s not nearly as exhaustive as refactoring. Refactoring, or “re-architecting,” completely modernizes an application by incorporating cloud-native patterns, microservices architecture, serverless computing, and other related technologies.
Basically, refactoring completely reworks an app’s architecture from the ground up. This approach enhances flexibility, scalability, and cost optimization, but it also requires substantial development effort and resources.
When organizations explore migration strategies, cost is usually the first consideration. However, it’s important to step back and evaluate migration expenses in the short and long term.
Traditionally, IT departments built their own data centers, invested millions in infrastructure, and hired many IT personnel to support various networks, systems, and applications. This financial model is better known as Capital Expenditures, or CAPEX.
As organizations increasingly shifted to the cloud and SaaS, technology solutions moved away from traditional CAPEX models to OPEX (Operational Expenditure) models. Instead of making large, up-front payments to own the hardware and software, organizations now incur ongoing expenses, typically monthly, quarterly, or annually.
The OPEX model allows companies to subscribe to services and renew on their terms, giving them flexibility and reducing long-term vendor lock-in. Additionally, OPEX provides scalability — organizations can adjust usage and costs as their needs change, avoiding over-investment in infrastructure that may go unused.
Many cloud-based solutions include licensing fees that cover upgrades and feature enhancements. By using OPEX, organizations can future-proof their environments without incurring huge CAPEX expenses.
While some specific use cases still favor traditional capital investments, the flexibility, scalability, and reduced long-term costs offered by the OPEX model are compelling advantages for most organizations. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for leaders as they navigate their options, as most VM providers offer some degree of both CAPEX and OPEX solutions.
For even deeper insight, request our full eBook at the form above. We’ll explore some of the leading alternatives to VMware, highlighting their key features, benefits, and potential drawbacks. By the end, you’ll better understand which platforms align best with your unique requirements.
Organizations deeply embedded in VMware can engage with virtualization consulting firms like our team at Hypershift. We create financial cost models and successful migration plans to guide organizations through the critical steps – without causing disruptions to the production systems.