Rising VMware costs are forcing organizations to make bigger decisions about their virtualization strategy. The good news? There are more options than ever before.
For years, VMware was an easy decision for many organizations. It was familiar. It worked. IT teams knew how to manage it, and staying put often seemed simpler than considering an alternative.
Then the economics changed.
Following Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware and subsequent changes to its licensing model, some organizations are seeing renewal costs climb dramatically. For DMC Technology Group clients, increases of three to six times previous agreement costs are not uncommon.
Suddenly, staying with the familiar comes with a much bigger price tag.
But this isn’t simply a licensing issue. Staying with or leaving the VMware environment is a strategic decision that can affect IT budgets, hardware investments, disaster recovery, infrastructure management and long-term technology plans.
And it’s a decision you need to make well before your next VMware renewal arrives.
The conversation about moving away from VMware often begins with Microsoft Hyper-V. For many organizations, this remains an excellent option. But it’s no longer the only one.
Today, DMC is helping organizations evaluate three primary paths: migrate to Microsoft Hyper-V, move the VMware environment to a hosted infrastructure, or replace VMware with Scale Computing.
The right answer depends less on the size of your organization and more on the infrastructure you already have. We also factor in the age of your hardware, your functionality requirements and where you want your systems to live.
Let’s take a closer look at these three pathways for managing and streamlining your virtual environment.
For organizations already invested heavily in the Microsoft ecosystem, Hyper-V can be a natural next step. Hyper-V functionality is often already included in your existing Microsoft licensing. So, there’s an opportunity to reduce reliance on VMware without introducing an entirely unfamiliar technology environment.
This route can make a lot of sense when you have relatively updated hardware with enough capacity to support the migration and you want to continue managing infrastructure on premises.
Hyper-V can provide a practical way to preserve existing infrastructure investments while changing the economics of virtualization. It’s a logical option for organizations that check these boxes:
What if your hardware is getting older, but you’re not ready to make a major capital investment?
A hosted environment offers another path.
Through DMC’s partnership with RackSquared, organizations can move their existing VMware environment from their facility to a hosted data center in Columbus and operate under RackSquared’s VMware licensing model.
This means you don’t necessarily have to choose between paying higher licensing costs and immediately abandoning VMware. You can continue using the platform while changing where and how the environment is hosted.
There’s another potential benefit: disaster recovery.
The hosted solution also provides failover to a second data center in Louisville. This allows you to strengthen disaster recovery capabilities as part of the transition.
A hosted VMware environment may make sense if:
For organizations that want to move away from VMware but need more virtualization management capabilities than Hyper-V alone may provide, Scale Computing offers another alternative.
Scale provides a virtualization platform with a robust set of management tools and can run on existing hardware or its own integrated hardware platform. This flexibility is especially attractive if you’re preparing for a hardware refresh or want to maintain your infrastructure on premises while moving to a different virtualization platform.
Scale’s integrated approach can also provide redundancy within a smaller infrastructure footprint, helping organizations simplify how their virtualized environments are managed.
We are already seeing organizations across industries adopt Scale as they rethink their VMware strategies. Scale may be a strong fit if:
There is one option we don’t recommend: waiting until the last minute. Moving a virtualized environment is a project, not a purchasing decision. And some hardware orders can also carry extended lead times. That’s why we recommend beginning the decision-making process at least four months before your VMware renewal date.
As we head into the fourth quarter and 2027 budgeting, now is the time to ask some important questions.
Ready to see what your options look like? Contact DMC Technology Group to start planning your VMware strategy before your next renewal.
President, DMC Technology Group
