• License costs are a worry for 90% of VMware customers
• Multi-vendor and security complexities are limiting migration for many
• Some customers are staying with VMware but sourcing their own support

A new study has claimed a staggering 90% of decision-makers are considering VMware alternatives purely based on licensing costs.

But following other changes made to the virtualization stack under its not-so-new Broadcom ownership, two in three (66%) of those surveyed by Rimini Street are also considering third-party support.

That said, there's a big step between considering leaving VMware and actually migrating away, and many face the reality of not being able to without incurring high costs or encountering technical difficulties.

VMware customers aren't happy, but they're not switching away

Broadcom's licensing changes are the biggest offender, the study shows, with 90% of those considering an alternative impacted by higher licensing costs and 54% unhappy with the end of support for perpetual licenses.

Despite very clear dissatisfaction, half (48%) of existing perpetual licence customers don't actually have any plans to move away from VMware Cloud Foundation.

Still, the wheels are in motion with three in five surveyed businesses considering multi-hypervisor strategies, potentially as the first stage in a multi-step process to move away from VMware. The journey ahead isn't so simple, though, with operational complexity (40%), managing multiple vendors (38%), handling security with an expanded attack surface (37%) and ups killing workers (37%) all cited as challenges.

"The shift for current VMware users is not simply about replacing one vendor with another. It reflects a broader effort by enterprises to reduce dependency on a single provider," Unisphere lead analyst Joe McKendrick explained.

What we're seeing more of, though, is the adoption of third-party support for existing VMware packages instead of total migrations away from the company. One in five (18%) are already using third-party support.

"For many organizations, that means balancing support for existing environments with new investments designed to improve resilience, security and scalability over time," McKendrick added.