VMware, Citrix and M365 price shocks: vendor lock-in comes home to roost
VMware, Citrix and M365 price shocks: vendor lock-in comes home to roost
Most organisations have found themselves with no option but to pay up as prices surge, says VOICE’s Robin Kaufmann.
Published on 27th February 2026
Massive price increases for licences and IT operations, overly complex and inflexible IT infrastructure: IT decision-makers are painfully aware of their dependence on manufacturers. They struggle with structural risks and often lack the courage to make a change.
Robin Kaufmann recently reflected the mood among IT decision-makers at the conference of the Microsoft partner association IAMCP in Munich. The head of the powerful user association VOICE speaks for over 450 companies, including many global corporations and medium-sized businesses.
Citing Gartner’s latest figures for global IT spending: $6.08 trillion – an increase of 10% – he added his own assessment: “On average, companies are spending 0.12% more on IT, which is effectively a zero growth rate, or even a decline in IT budgets when inflation is taken into account. This is the lowest level in many years.”
Additional budget is being spent on existing contracts
According to Kaufmann, any increases in IT budgets are being used solely to maintain the status quo because manufacturers have raised their prices massively.
The VOICE head mentioned VMware. Under the stewardship of owner Broadcom, prices have risen by an average of 300% among VOICE member companies following licencing changes.
Kaufmann also cited price increases of up to 33% for Microsoft MS365.
Partners of Microsoft and other manufacturers including Citrix, which effectively doubled licencing prices, are powerless to control these unexpected and sometimes significant price increases; yet they must defend them to their customers – sometimes being treated badly for their pains. VMware, for example, terminated partners contracts across the board.
At least VOICE is big enough to fight back. The association managed to negotiate VMware’s price hike down from a 300% to 40%. VOICE represents around €35 billion in IT expenditure: “That certainly impresses the Broadcom/VMware executives in Silicon Valley,” Kaufmann remarked.
However, not everyone has the courage to switch providers. It can take three years to migrate a large VMware environment, an effective lock-in. “That’s bad for business,” Kaufmann said.
If there is a positive to be taken from the price shock, it is this: IT decision-makers are much more aware of the risk of dependence on a single provider. This is confirmed by the 2026 State of Cloud Computing Survey study by Parallels.
The US technology provider asked IT decision-makers in Germany about their strategies, challenges and priorities. Unsurprisingly, concerns about vendor dependency in end-user computing and cloud are particularly high, with 94% citing this as an issue. “While the focus last year was primarily on costs and complexity, structural risks will come to the fore in 2026 – above all, the fear of vendor dependency,” the study says.
Risk: Roadmaps, predictability, support models – fear of strategic missteps
IT decision-makers see tying themselves to a single end-user compute (EUC), virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) provider as a risk. One in four (26%) expressed strong concern, while 68% expressed at least significant concern. Unclear product roadmaps, lack of predictability and the question of how viable support models will be in the future are viewed particularly critically.
“Last year, companies were primarily focused on reducing costs. This year, the focus is on avoiding strategic missteps,” said Prashant Ketkar, chief technology and product officer at Parallels. “IT teams … are looking for solutions that bring them automation, support hybrid realities and give them the freedom to adapt their strategy as needed.”
When it comes to artificial intelligence, according to the Parallels study, companies are looking to AI primarily to provide efficiency gains in their operations – not additional complexity. IT decision-makers are looking for automated error and issue detection, automatic updates and patches for applications, and significantly reduced administrative effort in day-to-day business.
But money for investment in AI (if there is any IT budget left after price increases) is scarce. According to the Parallels survey, only just under a third of German IT decision-makers are willing to pay extra for AI functions. “This points to a clear shift away from experimental pilot projects towards measurable efficiency gains,” say the authors of the study.