One year on from the close of the Broadcom acquisition of VMware, the virtualisation landscape looks materially different. Pricing has reset upward. Channel programmes have been restructured. Several product lines have been retired or rolled into bundles. And a number of long-standing customers have begun, in earnest, to evaluate alternatives.
We talk to organisations going through that evaluation every week. Three patterns are consistent.
Pattern one: cost is the trigger, but not the only motivation. Most evaluations start with a renewal quote that is multiple times the prior cost. But once organisations look closely, they often discover that they want more than just a cheaper alternative, they want a simpler relationship with their virtualisation vendor. Fewer agents, fewer SKUs, fewer surprises.
Pattern two: migration risk dominates the decision. Customers want to know that they can move workloads with confidence. Tooling matters. The credibility of the migration story matters more than the headline price.
Pattern three: open-source-derived platforms are now credible. KVM has been in production at scale across every major hyperscaler for over a decade. Customers are increasingly comfortable building enterprise platforms on it, provided the management plane is enterprise-grade.
The market is healthier with more credible options in it. We are pleased to be part of that.