Analyst firm Gartner believes over half of VMware users will start evaluating alternative hybrid cloud platforms yet still rates the Broadcom business unit a leader in two major markets.

Gartner predicted increased interest in VMware exits in its Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure (DHI) – aka hybrid clouds – which opens with a “Strategic Planning Assumption” that “By 2029, 55 percent of enterprises will initiate proofs of concept for alternative distributed hybrid infrastructure products to replace their VMware-based deployments and embrace hybrid cloud infrastructure delivery, up from 25 percent in 2026.”

Gartner’s mention of 2029 feels noteworthy, because that year will be six years after Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware. As previously written, plenty of VMware users acquired fresh three-year subscriptions in the months before the deal closed. Migrating from VMware to a rival platform is a risky and complex project, and we often hear of customers deciding it is safer to stick with Broadcom for longer while they hatch plans. If orgs in that position refresh for another three-year sub during 2026, 2029 would be a natural jumping off point.

Numerous virtualisation contenders are trying to lure Virtzilla’s customers, yet progress is slow. Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami has often said it will be several years before some are ready to move. While Gartner predicts a majority of VMware customers will contemplate a move, the Broadcom business unit will keep most of its customers for at least another three years – and recently turned its attention to refreshing its low-end vSphere Standard product, a move that will give it a chance to retain more current users.

The DHI Magic Quadrant rates VMware as a leader in the field, alongside AWS, Nutanix, Microsoft and Oracle. Gartner rates VMware’s core virtualisation technology, formal sovereign cloud ecosystem, and AI-native infrastructure as strengths.

One of the main motivations for quitting Microsoft 365 and adopting Google Workspace is spite, an emotion that sadly doesn’t produce a return on investment.

The source of that disappointing news is Domenico Scriva, a senior principal analyst at Gartner, who told the firm’s IT Symposium event in Australia that moving between the suites is also unlikely to save buyers much money.

He pointed out that Google Workspace licenses are cheaper than the E5 bundle that is Microsoft’s most popular M365 license, but that Google’s suite doesn’t cover telephony, security, business intelligence, or an OS license.

By the time users add all those bits to Google Workspace, he thinks they will pay $2 a month more than the cost of Microsoft’s suite – even after considering the fact that Google bundles its Gemini AI with Workspaces but Microsoft charges extra for Copilot.

Scriva said Google’s suite can be more cost effective when paired with an Apple Mac or Chromebook. Mac users get lower costs because their machines last longer than PCs, while Chromebook owners save on hardware purchase price but need to replace their machines more often.

Those numbers don’t consider the complexity of migrating between the suites, and the cost of moving. Scriva said dependencies built into either ecosystem are a likely source of migration complication, and the need for user training is another element that those who contemplate migrations sometimes neglect.

The analyst said he’s seen some M365 users trying to use the threat of migration as a negotiating tactic when renewing their Microsoft deals. He said that won’t work if you leave it too late, because Microsoft knows it’s not possible to make the move quickly.

He therefore advised starting work on a migration almost as soon as you sign a three-year M365 deal, because it takes at least two years to get it done.

If you do decide to move, he recommended having a specific outcome in mind, rather than just swapping one suite for another.

Productivity suites have scarcely changed in 30 years, he said, so it’s currently hard to see an outcome that makes a move worthwhile.

Happily, Scriva thinks AI may soon change that. He thinks we’re in a new wave of development of productivity suites in which AI assists with content creation. An imminent third wave, he predicted, will properly shake up the market by removing the need to use individual apps like word processors or presentation graphics packages, which he thinks will be replaced by some kind of AI interface that allows users to express what they want to do and then sit back and watch as their suite has a crack at the job.

VMware has defended its decision to end public downloads of its Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK).

VDDK is an SDK that a Broadcom technical document describes as “a set of libraries and utilities that enable software developers to create applications that can access and manipulate virtual disks used” and also “provides APIs for backup and recovery, cloning, and other operations on virtual disks.”

Those qualities mean VDDK is also useful when moving VMs from VMware to another virtualisation environment.

VMware’s rivals spotted that and made VDDK part of their migration tools. Nutanix’s Move, for example, requires a VDDK library to do the job. Red Hat also recommends using VDDK for migrations.

ShapeBlue, an integrator that specialises in Apache CloudStack, an alternative to VMware, rates VDDK as an important part of migration tools.

“The virt-v2v engine that sits underneath most VMware-to-KVM conversion work supports VDDK as an input transport,” the company wrote in late August.

ShapeBlue’s post appeared a day or two after VMware, without fanfare or an explanation, took down the web pages that offered VDDK downloads.

“A vendor is entitled to change how it distributes an SDK,” ShapeBlue wrote. “Doing it without a word, while the Apache CloudStack administration guide and other projects’ install instructions still tell people to click a link that no longer resolves, is something else.”

“The cost lands unevenly too,” the company added. “A large backup vendor with a partner relationship has someone to call. A three-person migration consultancy, an open-source project, or a customer converting their own workloads has a forum post and a 404.”

In an email, VMware defended its actions. To understand its response, know that VMware calls third party developers who work with its products technology alliance partners – aka “TAPs”.

“Access to the VDDK is still available through select TAP for its licensed use case, which has always been backup and recovery,” said VMware. “Customers needing backup and recovery capabilities can choose from the many approved solutions already available from these partners.”

“The VDDK is not a customer entitlement. It is a software development kit covered by its own developer license and was never included with a Broadcom software purchase,” a company spokesperson added.

VMware’s argument is therefore that users should not expect they can use VDDK, and that migrations is an unlicensed use case for the tool – which remains available as part of products from TAP members.

VMware’s rivals have pointed out that ending public VDDK downloads could disrupt some migration projects that have already commenced, making the withdrawal of downloads jarring given the virtualisation giant hasn’t previously policed use of the SDK.

Services organisations that perform VMware migrations have found workarounds that make it possible to migrate VMs without needing VDDK.

VMware’s decision to stop public VDDK downloads comes at a time when its changed licensing policies have seen some users either consider reducing their use of its products – as was the case at VMware channel partner Rackspace – or shifting to a rival platform.

VDDK has been downloadable for years and VMware cannot have been ignorant of how its rivals used the SDK to facilitate migrations. It’s therefore not hard to conclude that this is a defensive move by VMware, given it allowed downloads for years.

Moving VMs is, however, among the easier parts of a virtualisation migration project. Rebuilding or replacing the entirety of a virtualised environment, across networks, security, and storage, is the hard part and VMware knows it – which is why it offers a site recovery tool that doubles as a migration utility.

Removing easy access to VDDK therefore doesn’t change much for those planning a move away from VMware.

Germany’s Zeiss Group, a key supplier to the global semiconductor industry, overhauled plans to move to a new cloud-based SAP SE software service after costs swelled to more than €200 million over several years.

The precision optics maker will now use a so-called brownfield approach, which means moving its existing software systems to the cloud, in order to save money, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public.

External consultancies are leading the transition, the people said. The initial attempts to build a new system from the ground up were more complicated than expected, they added.

The decision offers a window into the complexity and expense of cloud transformations, a process that will drive SAP’s growth through the end of the decade. Starting in 2020, SAP CEO Christian Klein has pushed customers to move from locally hosted enterprise software to a subscription-based online service, which is more lucrative for the company and currently accounts for more than 60% of revenue.

SAP is Europe’s largest software company and sells products to manage finances, supply chains and other core business functions. More than 90% of the Fortune 500 use its solutions. Moving to the cloud can be a complex process and many customers still haven’t completed the transition, even as SAP plans to end regular support for its legacy on-premise solutions by the end of next year.

Cloud migration projects often involve external partners such as Accenture, EY or PricewaterhouseCoopers and take years and millions of dollars to complete. Moving sensitive business data is a delicate operation and can cause critical disruptions if done poorly.

US medical tech company Zimmer Biomet Holdings Inc sued Deloitte last year over a botched implementation of SAP’s cloud platform. The complaint alleges the process “was a disaster” and the result “was an overly customised software system riddled with defects and functionality gaps.” Zimmer paid US$94 million in fees, 36% more than Deloitte had represented, according to the complaint.

Deloitte is fighting Zimmer Biomet’s “meritless claim”, according to a company spokesperson. A spokesperson for Zimmer Biomet declined to comment.

Zeiss began planning its path to the cloud six years ago and has now reconfigured the migration of its enterprise resource planning, or ERP, software “to achieve faster progress”, a spokeswoman for the company said in a statement. She declined to comment on the investment or the project’s timeline.

A spokesperson for SAP declined to comment on customers’ projects.

Zeiss is the exclusive supplier of optics used in ASML Holding NV’s most sophisticated lithography machines, which make advanced semiconductors, including for Nvidia Corp. Based in the German city of Oberkochen, Zeiss is expanding its operations to meet booming demand from chipmakers, the head of its semiconductor division, Frank Rohmund, told Bloomberg last month.

Zeiss initially planned a greenfield approach, which would have meant building the company’s core IT functions from scratch in the cloud, according to the people. Such projects seek to get rid of needlessly complex legacy processes and streamline systems.

The company has now pivoted to a brownfield approach that will preserve many existing data systems, according to the Zeiss spokeswoman.

The cost of moving to the cloud is highly variable, according to Byron Ford, a consultant at the Berkeley Partnership who works on SAP migrations. Greenfield projects generally cost at least 20% more than brownfield ones but can be twice as expensive, depending on factors such as which geographies are moving, the number of systems involved and the client’s own resources, he said.

A greenfield migration of several systems in a single country might cost £35 million to £40 million and a global project twice that or more, Ford added.

Premier League football club Tottenham Hotspur has ditched VMware as part of a wider datacenter and network refresh, saving itself more than 85 percent on licensing costs – though its Chief Technology Officer says the decision wasn’t purely financial.

Transforming Spurs into a winning force on the pitch remains a work in progress. Off the pitch, though, the club is nearing the end of a project to overhaul the tech inside its White Hart Lane stadium in north London.

The ground holds almost 63,000 fans and runs more than 1,650 Wi-Fi access points, 840+ under seat access points, 700 Bluetooth beacons, 20,000 network access points with 1,849 IPTV screens and 519 CCTV cameras connected. A six aisle datacenter is also sited within the arena.

Rob Pickering, CTO at Spurs, said that on the server, storage and networking side, the club has switched entirely to the HPE GreenLake portfolio, “underpinned by OpsRamp and Morpheus (VM Essentials).” HPE will run the hybrid cloud managed service.

In the datacenter, Spurs has moved to ProLiant Compute Gen12 servers and HPE Alletra storage MP. Connectivity is being upgraded to WiFi 7 and HPE Aruba Central with self-driving capabilities.

Why migrate from VMware? “Savings is a big part of the reason,” said Pickering. “It’s a significant amount, north of 85 percent,” less than the club was forking out for licensing.

“We moved away as we in put the infrastructure… over the last three months,” he added. “The issues with the Broadcom takeover of VMware are well known in terms of the commercial changes to their structure and the way that they engage with clients.”

Since buying VMware in 2023, Broadcom has discontinued certain standalone products in favour of bundles that are often pricier regardless of whether customers use every components. Broadcom seems only focused on VMware’s 10,000 to 30,000 largest customers, out of a base that numbered 350,000 before the takeover.

Pickering framed virtualisation itself as a commodity: “If it’s not built into a broader AI operation stack, the value is even lower again. Having that all connected back into an operation stack that our team can work from – one pane of glass – is worth more than just the saving that come from moving vendor A to vendor B. We do see significant savings from that, but really it’s all part of the broader story of how do we put AI ops at the heart of what we do from a technology perspective.”

He said the tech team at Spurs is relatively small, so the “ability to use AI operations to proactively see faults and remediate them without the input of a person is really critical to us.”

Spurs declined to disclose what it had been paying VMware or which VMware products it used. Pickering did, however, describe HPE VM Essentials (VME) as a “completely capable replacement.”

The Aruba network upgrade is “running late” and should be completed within a month. Getting it right matters as up to about 30,000 fans hop onto the stadium’s Wi-Fi at any given point during a game. The ground also doubles as a concert venue and hosts NFL matches and rugby league games too.

“The process of replacing all of those consistently in a non-impactful way – given the stadium operates really 365 days a year – is one of the hardest challenges of doing any technology project in a stadium. There’s no real window of downtime in stadium.”

Of course there’s the physics too: “A stadium is a giant Faraday cage. It’s glass and steel. It’s very hard to get RF to work. We make sure we build things that ensure the RS signal can travel the distance it needs to. We also need a lot of density to do that… We’re doing like 1,800 access points across the stadium in totality. So it’s significant in terms of the physical engineering challenge to get it in here, but also the radio engineering challenge.”

With Spurs losing its first two Premier League Games despite spending £300 million on new players during the summer, the club’s technology upgrades may be delivering more reliable returns than its transfer business, at least for now.

Microsoft will phase out the current licensing structure for Azure VMware Solution (AVS). This will eliminate one option for organisations to use VMware in the cloud without licensing VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) themselves. Existing customers have until August 2027 to transition.

Under the current version of AVS, the necessary licenses for vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, NSX, and other components are included in the service Microsoft provides. That model is being phased out. Starting October 31, 2026, Microsoft will no longer sell new AVS environments that include these VMware licenses.

Going forward, customers must have their own VCF license from Broadcom, reports The Register. They can then use it within AVS via the “Bring Your Own License” model, also known as AVS VCF BYOL. Existing users of the current setup must transition by August 30, 2027, at the latest. After that, their existing environments will no longer run the same way.

Centorrino Technologies is replacing VMware across its hosted infrastructure platform with SUSE Virtualisation to avoid higher costs associated with VMware under Broadcom.

The Australian technology provider has already been running the platform in production and is now preparing for a broader customer rollout. That phase is expected to involve migrating thousands of virtual machine instances from VMware to SUSE Virtualisation across customer environments.

The project reflects a broader response from infrastructure providers and enterprise users to changes in licensing and subscription costs in the virtualisation market. For Centorrino Technologies, the work involved more than replacing one platform with another. It also had to migrate production workloads with minimal interruption, support multi-tenant hosting arrangements and maintain service availability.

A key part of the effort has been creating a repeatable migration framework for use across hundreds of customer environments. The process is intended to move workloads at scale while keeping disruption low.

HPE is taking advantage of VMware’s expensive licensing changes by offering customers free use of its own VM Essentials product for a year, plus a $1 license for its Zerto data protection product to help ease migrations.

The announcement of the deal came at the Partner Growth Summit staged alongside their HPE Discover event in Las Vegas, and framed them as a migration assistance program intended to arm channel partners who want to help customers reduce their financial risk when migrating virtualisation platforms.

“One of the big things we see is that as customers are going through this journey on transforming their operating model, you end up with double expenses and so we’re really pleased to announce the program around Morpheus and platform migration,” said EVP and CTO Fidelma Russo.

“We are announcing that as a customer goes through this transformation with HPE Morpheus VM Essentials, you don’t pay for the first year of licenses. You will get Zerto migration licenses during that period to help you move, and so what this does is it helps mitigate the double-bubble cost problem that customers see as they are looking to migrate from one platform to another.”

Neither Russo nor HPE mentioned VMware as part of their pitch for this migration assistance program, but it seems pretty clear where it is aimed.

At its last Discover event in Barcelona, HPE talked about customers seeing license fees for virtualisation skyrocketing and claimed that it was able to provide “a fully integrated enterprise-grade alternative” with Morpheus and OpsRamp management tools, plus Zerto disaster recovery software.

A survey recently found that half of VMware users plan to reduce their use of the virtualisation pioneer’s products by 2028. Since being acquired by Broadcom, VMware license costs have increased by 800 to 1,500 percent for some customers. VMware also ended partner programs that many service providers relied on.

HPE says it is introducing VM Essentials for Partner IT to help providers transition their virtualised business applications. This will see it provide VM Essentials software licenses free of charge for three years, with partners paying only support costs, to the 600 partners who gain Private Cloud with Virtualisation competency by the end of the year.

The company is also extending its channel-only model to cover HPE Private Cloud PC3000 (formerly HPE Private Cloud Business Edition), HPE SimpliVity PC1000, and HPE Zerto software from July 1. HPE said this follows the success of selling Morpheus VM Essentials through a channel-only route to market.

Also at the Partner Growth Summit, the IT biz will disclose that it is unifying the HPE and Juniper Networks partner programs under its Partner Ready Vantage umbrella. The aim is to have a single, global program for partners to offer services across networking, cloud, and AI.

This change will take effect from November 1, after which partners will operate under one program with a simplified structure, aligned incentives, and a consistent engagement model, while existing investments are protected, or so HPE claims.

The company also says it will help cloud service providers build and operate differentiated private cloud services with CloudOps Software and the backing of HPE Partner Ready Vantage.

“Partners want a simpler way to engage and a bigger opportunity to grow,” said Simon Ewington, HPE’s SVP for Worldwide Channel and Partner Ecosystem.