Some companies are considering breaking with VMware after a shift to subscription-focused licensing following its acquisition by Broadcom, but changing core software is not as easy as it sounds. Some voices are also warning of possible after-effects.

The Register reported on May 11 that Gartner research vice president Paul Delory (폴 들로리) warned that companies that decide to part ways with VMware will ultimately end up with more complex and less efficient infrastructure.

Delory said at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Cloud Strategies Conference in Sydney that VMware users have no technical reason to choose rival hypervisors and that there is no solution that can replace the VMware Cloud Foundation (Cloud Foundation·VCF) product lineup on a one-to-one basis.

Broadcom's pricing policy sells subscriptions only for the full VCF package. That has generally resulted in a 300 to 400 percent rise in licensing costs for VMware users.

Many VMware users are therefore looking for alternatives, but Delory said these companies will end up with more complex infrastructure for two reasons.

First, most companies cannot leave VMware entirely. With dependencies intertwined, cutting back or eliminating a VMware environment requires adopting multiple alternative solutions, which increases the infrastructure that must be managed. Second, because no rival hypervisor can match its efficiency and VM density, moving away could mean needing to buy more hardware.

Delory named public cloud and hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) providers as the best alternatives to VMware, but said HCI vendors other than Nutanix have weak migration tools and require custom automation work. He added that OpenStack is "too big and complex for general IT organisations to handle effectively."

He said VMware could keep raising prices because users find it hard to leave, adding: "That bet might be right. It needs to be made not to do that."

Delory predicted that most users will opt to scale down rather than eliminate VMware entirely. Gartner expects 35 percent of workloads currently running on VMware to move to other platforms by 2028.