TLDR¶

• Core Points: Despite VMware’s broad adoption, most users are actively reducing their VMware footprint, driven by cost, cloud-native alternatives, and strategic consolidation.

• Main Content: A CloudBolt-commissioned survey highlights ongoing efforts to decommission or shrink VMware environments, with Broadcom’s strategy cited as not prioritizing universal, perpetual customer retention.

• Key Insights: Organizations pursue multi-hypervisor or cloud-first approaches; total cost of ownership and operational complexity drive rationalization; vendor strategy and product alignment influence enterprise decisions.

• Considerations: Transition timing, skill gaps, licensing implications, and interoperability across on-prem and cloud environments must be managed carefully.

• Recommended Actions: Map workloads to best-fit platforms, inventory dependencies, plan phased migrations, and engage in vendor-neutral governance to optimize footprint and cost.

Content Overview¶

The survey examined how organizations are handling their VMware deployments in an environment of rising cloud adoption and evolving infrastructure strategies. Despite VMware’s long-standing market position and broad enterprise penetration, a substantial portion of respondents reported active efforts to reduce their VMware footprint. The findings reflect a tension between established virtualization stacks and newer approaches that emphasize cloud-native architectures, multi-cloud strategies, and cost efficiency. The report, produced by CloudBolt with backing from industry observers, underscores a strategic shift in many enterprises: VMware remains foundational but is increasingly viewed as an element to be optimized rather than a universal, ongoing necessity.

The narrative surrounding VMware’s role in enterprise IT has evolved in recent years. While VMware’s vSphere and related products have historically served as the backbone for on-premises virtualization, the rise of containerization, Kubernetes, and hyperscale cloud services has redefined how organizations architect and manage workloads. Enterprises are evaluating whether to rehost, refactor, or retire VMware-based infrastructure as part of broader efficiency and modernization programs. The survey’s emphasis on “actively reducing their VMware footprint” points to a broader industry trend toward more nimble, interoperable, and cost-conscious IT environments.

Broadcom’s influence—through its acquisition of VMware—adds a decisive dimension to these decisions. The survey notes that Broadcom’s strategy is not aimed at maintaining every customer in a perpetual, vendor-locked state. This perspective suggests a shift toward a more value-driven relationship model, where customers may adopt a mix of VMware products alongside alternative platforms that meet evolving business requirements. In this context, customers are evaluating trade-offs between staying within a VMware-centric stack and adopting a broader, multi-vendor, or multi-cloud approach. The implications touch on licensing, support, integration, and total cost of ownership.

In-Depth Analysis¶

The survey’s core finding—that the majority of VMware users are actively reducing their footprint—reflects a broader recalibration of enterprise IT priorities. Several drivers are converging to push organizations toward this rationalization.

First, cost considerations remain central. While VMware has historically offered a compelling virtualization platform, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is no longer solely tied to on-prem licenses. Cloud economics, software-defined networking, storage, and ongoing support costs contribute to a comprehensive cost calculus. As organizations scale, even incremental savings per host can accumulate into significant annual reductions. The survey’s participants frequently cited licensing and maintenance expenses as factors motivating consolidation or migration away from VMware-centric stacks.

Second, the maturation of cloud-native technologies underpins a shift in architectural preferences. Kubernetes and containerized workloads have gained traction as vehicles for portability and elasticity. For certain workloads, a shift to cloud-native runtimes or managed Kubernetes services in public clouds can offer operational efficiencies, faster iteration cycles, and reduced dependency on traditional virtualization layers. This transition often involves re-platforming or rearchitecting applications, a process that some enterprises are prioritizing to align with modern development practices and faster time-to-market goals.

Third, multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud strategies influence platform choices. Enterprises increasingly distribute workloads across on-premises infrastructure and multiple cloud providers. In such environments, a hyperscaler or cloud-native framework may provide advantages in orchestration, scalability, and resilience. VMware’s role within these mixed environments continues to evolve: for some, it remains a stabilizing foundation for certain apps or legacy systems; for others, it becomes one node in a broader, diverse infrastructure ecosystem. The survey indicates that many organizations are pursuing heterogeneity as a deliberate strategy to avoid vendor lock-in and to optimize performance and cost across environments.

Fourth, the vendor landscape continues to shape decision-making. Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware introduced a strategic realignment of priorities, with a focus on value creation and portfolio optimization rather than guaranteeing persistence of every customer relationship within a monolithic VMware-centric ecosystem. This stance may influence customers to adopt more flexible procurement and deployment options, seeking interoperability with non-VMware platforms or leveraging cloud-managed services that reduce the burden of on-prem licenses and maintenance. The perception of Broadcom’s strategy as emphasizing selective, value-driven engagement rather than universal retention can encourage organizations to pursue a rationalized footprint that better matches business needs and risk tolerance.

The survey’s insights also raise considerations about governance, skills, and transition planning. Reducing dependence on VMware is not purely a technological decision; it requires careful program management to avoid disruption. Organizations must inventory workloads, assess dependencies, and determine which applications can move to alternative platforms without compromising performance, security, or compliance. This often entails a phased approach, prioritizing low-risk workloads for migration or retirement while preserving mission-critical systems on stable virtualization platforms where appropriate. The process also involves addressing skill gaps, as teams may need retraining for cloud-native tooling, container orchestration, or hybrid management platforms.

From a vendor perspective, the findings suggest a market in which customers are seeking clarity, flexibility, and measurable value. Enterprises are looking for licensing models that align with consumption-based or outcome-based cost structures, robust migration tooling, and integrated management capabilities that unify on-prem and cloud operations. The ongoing evolution of VMware’s product strategy, including apparent accommodations for hybrid and multi-cloud use cases, will be watched closely by IT leaders trying to balance stability with modernization. The survey’s results imply that customers are not primarily driven by a single vendor’s persistence but by the practicalities of delivering reliable services, reducing costs, and enabling agile development.

The broader industry context also features workload modernization pressures, data gravity considerations, and cybersecurity implications. As organizations move workloads toward cloud-native environments or across multiple clouds, data localization requirements, latency needs, and regulatory constraints become more pronounced. This complexity makes a one-size-fits-all approach impractical, reinforcing the rationale for a targeted, workload-by-workload evaluation of whether to maintain, migrate, or retire VMware-based deployments. In this framework, the “footprint” is not merely a count of hosts or vCenters; it is an architectural pattern reflecting how an organization designs, deploys, and secures its workloads across environments.

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Perspectives and Impact¶

Industry observers and enterprise IT leaders view the continued effort to shrink VMware footprints as indicative of a larger modernization wave. Several implications emerge from the survey’s findings:

• Strategic alignment with business goals: Organizations increasingly tie infrastructure choices to business outcomes such as faster application delivery, improved scalability, and cost discipline. VMware remains relevant for certain workloads, but enterprise roadmaps emphasize flexibility and speed enabled by cloud-native options and multi-cloud architectures.

• Licensing and vendor dynamics: The relationship between customers and their vendors is evolving. The Broadcom-era stance emphasizes value-driven engagements over blanket customer retention, potentially accelerating choice-driven decisions in favor of diversified platforms. This may incentivize customers to consolidate VMware usage where it makes strategic sense while embracing alternative solutions where they offer superior alignment with business objectives.

• Operational maturity and automation: The move away from a VMware-dominated environment often goes hand in hand with increased automation, standardized deployment patterns, and centralized governance. When organizations pare back dependencies on a single virtualization layer, they often invest in container orchestration, platform engineering, and as-a-service offerings that streamline operations and reduce manual overhead.

• Risk management and resilience: A diversified stack can improve resilience by avoiding single points of failure or vendor-specific limitations. However, it also increases complexity in terms of interoperability, monitoring, and security. Enterprises must strengthen their cloud-native security postures, identity and access management, and data protection strategies to manage these risks effectively.

• Workforce implications: IT teams confronting a changing landscape may need to cultivate new skills in containers, orchestration, cloud management platforms, and hybrid networking. Talent development becomes a critical component of any modernization program, ensuring that staff can design, deploy, and operate diversified environments with confidence.

The survey’s framing of active footprint reduction underscores that VMware’s role is being reframed rather than diminished. For some organizations, VMware will continue to be a critical component of their virtualization strategy, particularly for legacy applications or tightly integrated data center operations. For others, it will serve as one of several tools in a diversified toolkit, employed where it offers tangible benefits and decommissioned where it no longer aligns with strategic priorities. The ongoing evolution of VMware’s product strategy, combined with market pressures and cloud-native advancements, will determine the pace and nature of these transitions.

Looking ahead, the enterprise IT landscape is likely to experience continued experimentation with hybrid and multi-cloud approaches. As vendors respond with more flexible licensing, enhanced migration tooling, and better integration across platforms, organizations may achieve more seamless portability of workloads. The key will be balancing stability, performance, and cost while maintaining robust security and governance. The survey’s findings indicate that the industry will likely continue to optimize rather than maintain a static footprint, with modernization becoming a continual objective rather than a one-time project.

Key Takeaways¶

Main Points:
– A majority of VMware users report actively reducing their VMware footprint.
– Cost, cloud-native transitions, and multi-cloud strategies drive consolidation and migration decisions.
– Broadcom’s strategy is viewed as prioritizing value and selective engagement over universal customer retention.

Areas of Concern:
– Transition planning and risk management are essential to avoid service disruption.
– Licensing changes and interoperability complexities can complicate migrations.
– Skill gaps in cloud-native technologies require organizational investment.

Summary and Recommendations¶

The evidence from the CloudBolt-backed survey paints a pragmatic picture of enterprise IT today: organizations are evaluating the continued ubiquity of VMware within their stacks and are increasingly choosing to shrink or migrate away from VMware-centric infrastructures where feasible. This shift is driven by a combination of cost considerations, the maturation of cloud-native technologies, and the desire to embrace multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud architectures that offer greater flexibility and resilience. Broadcom’s positioning further reinforces a market environment where customers should expect more selective engagement and value-based relationships rather than blanket retention guarantees.

For IT leaders, the practical path forward involves disciplined workload rationalization. Start with a complete inventory of VMware-dependent assets, categorize applications by criticality, and map migration or retirement plans against business impact and regulatory requirements. Develop a phased migration strategy that prioritizes low-risk, high-payoff workloads, while preserving mission-critical systems on platforms that guarantee reliability and performance. Invest in migration tooling, automation, and governance to minimize downtime and optimize resource utilization. Also, monitor licensing models and vendor roadmaps to align procurement with anticipated needs, avoiding over-commitment or underutilization of resources.

A successful footprint reduction program should not merely reduce the number of hosts or licenses; it should optimize the overall architecture for today’s reality, where cloud-native options and multi-cloud flexibility offer compelling benefits. This means adopting a balanced, data-driven approach to decide which workloads stay on VMware, which migrate to alternative platforms, and which are retired. By aligning IT infrastructure decisions with strategic business objectives, organizations can improve cost efficiency, accelerate innovation, and maintain robust security and compliance across a diversified technology landscape.

References¶

• Original: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/02/most-vmware-users-still-actively-reducing-their-vmware-footprint-survey-finds/
• Additional context: articles on VMware footprint trends, Broadcom’s VMware strategy, and cloud-native modernization perspectives
• Related sources to consider:
• Industry analyses on multi-cloud adoption and virtualization trends
• Vendor roadmaps for VMware in a Broadcom-era strategy
• Best practices for workload migration and cloud-native implementation

*圖片來源：Unsplash*