2026 IT Virtualization Survey: What's Next for VMware Users
Video summary
As VMware’s licensing and support model continues to evolve, organizations are rethinking the future of their virtualization strategies. With support for vSphere 8 perpetual licenses ending in October 2027 and subscription costs on the rise, IT leaders are looking for ways to control costs, reduce complexity and maintain security and resiliency.
Join industry experts as they break down findings from the “2026 IT Virtualization Survey: What’s Next for VMware Users,” which features gathered data and insights from 269 global IT infrastructure and security leaders.
What you’ll learn:
- Why 90% of decision-makers are thinking of leaving VMware due to high licensing costs
- How organizations are building vendor-independent roadmaps
- Why proactive security approaches are increasingly viewed as essential
- The top reasons why 48% of decision-makers are considering third-party support
Watch the on-demand webinar for practical insights to take control of your future IT virtualization strategy with confidence.
Additional resources
Video transcript
00:00 Stephen Faig: Welcome to today’s webinar brought to you by Rimini Street. I’m Stephen Faig, Director at Database Trends and Applications and Unisphere. I’ll be your host for today’s broadcast. Our presentation today is titled 2026 IT Virtualization Survey. What’s next for VMware users? Before we begin, I want to explain how you can participate. We’ll have a live QNA session toward the end of the program. If you have a question at any point during the discussion, simply type it into the question box and click Submit. And we will do our best to answer as many questions as possible.
00:36 Stephen Faig: Now, I’d like to introduce our speakers. We’re very pleased to have with us Joe McKendrick, author and Lead Analyst at Unisphere Research, Renee Wells, Vice President of Product Strategy at Rimini Street and Dee-Dee Atta, Product Marketing Director at Rimini Street
01:02 Stephen Faig: Today’s discussion focuses on a major shift taking place across the virtualization landscape. We’re also sharing for the first time findings from a brand new research conducted by DBTA and Unisphere in partnership with Rimini Street. Our study surveyed 269 IT infrastructure and security leaders worldwide to better understand how organizations are responding to VMware’s licensing changes, support deadlines and evolving infrastructure requirements
01:27 Stephen Faig: The results provide a snapshot of how organizations are evaluating their options and planning their next steps in a rapidly changing virtualization market. Throughout today’s discussion, we’ll share key findings from the research and discuss what they mean for IT leaders developing future infrastructure strategies. But first, I thought it would be nice for you to get to know our panelists a little better and hear what they’re seeing in the market.
01:53 Stephen Faig: So, Mr. Mckendrick, I’m going to have you kick things off. Joe, you’ve been following the virtualization market for a long time. What’s different about today’s environment and why does this moment feel like such a significant inflection point for organizations?
02:10 Joe McKendrick: Thanks, Steve and Renee, it’s great to be joining you today. And let me just say, I’ve been through quite a few VMWorlds in my time, then more recently called VMware Explorer over the years and going back, you know, not that long ago actually, when you thought of virtualization. You thought of VMware the two terms VMware virtualization. They were synonymous.
02:35 Joe McKendrick: And VMware to its credit, essentially created the virtualization market way back when you know from the days when it was more of an internal affair, what we affectionately called Server virtualization now to the rise of cloud computing and beyond. And we see that the IT virtualization market is really going through some rapid changes and this is reflected in the data we’re going to be presenting you today. It’s a significant inflection point because of the licensing shocks, the growth of AI, the impact to infrastructure, the rise of cloud, these forces are all converging, so making decisions these days on virtualization has moved from incremental or tactical overhauls of local servers to enterprise-wide transformation, and that’s what’s going on.
03:18 Stephen Faig: That’s a lot. I like it. Renee, in your role working closely with enterprise IT leaders, what virtualization or infrastructure challenges come up most often in customer conversations today?
03:33 Renee Wells: So thanks for the question. As we speak with IT leaders around the world, we’re consistently hearing, I think, three key questions. First, how do we buy time?
03:44 Renee Wells: Organizations want to keep their current VMware environments fully supported. They want them to be secure. They want them to be stable, all while they’re evaluating their options. They don’t want to make rush decisions that can impact their businesses for years to come.
04:01 Renee Wells: Second, what is that long-term strategy? Some organizations are considering staying on their current platform, while others are exploring alternative hypervisors, cloud adoption, containers and even hybrid environments. The challenge that we’re hearing about is determining which path best balances business objectives, their risk and their future flexibility.
04:31 Renee Wells: So the third is how much this is going to cost me? Right, IT leaders are clear that they need a clear understanding of both the short-term and the long-term financial impacts and that includes operating expenses, what’s the potential hardware investment? How much is migration or replatforming going to cost? And of course, what about the training that’s required to support the new technology and skills?
04:59 Renee Wells: So at the end of the day. They’re essentially looking at three things. Time to make informed decisions, confidence about their future state strategy and then clarity around those financial implications of their choices.
05:16 Stephen Faig: Understood. Dee-Dee, from a product and market perspective, what trends are you watching most quickly as organizations rethink their virtualization strategies?
05:25 Dee-Dee Atta: Yeah. So first and foremost, it’s great to be with you, Steven, Renee and Joe today on this tremendous topic that has captivated the market. And it’s a great question. And so the IT virtualization stack, it’s not just the hypervisor or server layer, but it also covers virtualized compute, network storage, applications management and orchestration, even VDI, which is virtual desktop infrastructure. And so that said, the trends we’re monitoring include the extent to which organizations plan to keep their on premises IT virtualization operations running on VMware. That’s due to resiliency compliance with regulatory issues.
06:05 Dee-Dee Atta: Or even the challenges that Renee described to migrate data and workloads. We’re also looking at the trend in terms of a movement from a single source vendor, which in this case has been VMware for over 20 years to a multiple vendor IT virtualization stack. We’re looking at the adoption of open-source hypervisors such as Proxmox, the trend toward hybrid platforms, whether it is hybrid on premises with cloud, hybrid containers and virtual machines or any permutation that organizations are finding is their right path to modernization. And finally, we’re looking at the emergence of AI OPS for automation, for cost optimization as well as governance.
06:48 Stephen Faig: Thank you everyone. It’s interesting to hear how many of those themes align with what we found in the research. So let’s start with what may be the most eye-opening finding from the survey.
07:01 Stephen Faig: 90% are considering leaving VMware Broadcom due to higher licensing costs, and 54% cite the October 2027 end of support deadline for perpetual licenses as a reason to evaluate alternatives.
07:19 Stephen Faig: Joe 90%.Were you surprised by how overwhelming that number was? What does this tell us about the current state of the market?
07:26 Joe McKendrick: Yeah, Steve, frankly, it was kind of a surprise. You know, when we designed the survey with our Rimini Street partners, Dee-Dee and Renee, we knew there was churn going on in this space, in the VMware space, you know, and high level dissatisfaction with the organization.
07:54 Joe McKendrick: And when we looked at the data as it came in, we saw the degree to which this migration was happening and yes, it was definitely a real eye opener. 9 out of 10 that’s huge. That’s a huge loss for any vendor. It’s a collapse of an entire user base. You know, it’s a collapse and you know, we’ve conducted many, many surveys of the IT and data landscape and markets here at Unisphere Research over the years and I’ve really never seen anything of this magnitude.
08:14 Joe McKendrick: And of course, when something collapses, something has to replace it. And our survey shows how IT managers are looking to new opportunities and new ways of doing things. And as Dee-Dee and Renee pointed out, they have to be careful. They have to look at the future and how things are unfolding. But we see the IT virtualization market itself rapidly filling in the gaps that may be left behind by VMware. You know, it’s an enormous market. It’s growing fast. A lot of it’s being fueled by AI. The global market is estimated to be up at about 1000 and $110 billion this year, projected to double in five years. It’s a compounded annual growth rate about 15%. That’s more to our intelligence telling us this. And who could ignore that kind of growth, You know, that kind of market growth.
09:05 Joe McKendrick: Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware 3 years ago was a real catalyst as well for market disruption, you know, the steep subscription pricing hikes, the Bundling requirements, ecosystem shifts, you know, prompted a lot of re-evaluation to alternatives, you know HyperV, Nutanix, open source solutions, public and private cloud arrangements.
09:33 Joe McKendrick: And we also see, ironically, the need to support AI is a major driver these days for virtualization capabilities. If you’re going to virtualize, you need to do so to support AI. But AI is also a way to support the workloads cited by a majority of our respondents, 61%. So AI has a hand everywhere it seems like to a certain degree. So I just want to say AI is helping our respondents do AI.
10:02 Stephen Faig: Yeah, it’s a driver and an enabler. Renee, are these findings consistent with the conversations you’re having with customers?
10:10 Renee Wells: Oh, Oh yeah. They’re consistent with the conversations we had with clients as well as prospects. In fact, the VMware users that we’ve spoken with on average have seen price increases from three to 5X. However, we’ve heard as high as 15X of what they’re paying today.
10:25 Renee Wells: More often than not, the users that we speak with continue to be surprised by these cost escalations, even though we knew and heard they were coming, particularly since they didn’t budget for them and they did not anticipate the percentage of the fee increases.
10:45 Stephen Faig: Yeah, that is wild. And you don’t have to look very far to find examples of customers upset about price increases. You can even read it in the news. Dee-Dee, another 54% of survey respondents cited that October 27th end of support for perpetual licenses as a reason to explore alternatives. How significant is that deadline in shaping future infrastructure decisions?
11:15 Dee-Dee Atta: Stephen it’s absolutely very significant. And just some background for the audience. So VMware ended general support for vSphere 7 perpetual licenses and its associated product releases like vCenter 7.x, ESXi 7.x, vSan 7.x, et cetera in October of 2025. And this was the release that over 50% of global organizations have used and relied on and that’s now end of general support from VMware Broadcom. Now VMware plans to end general support for vSphere 8 and its associated vSphere 8 product releases in October 2027 as you mentioned and it’s significant for a number of reasons. So first vSphere 8 and the associated product releases as the last VMware perpetual license released from VMware Broadcom.
12:10 Dee-Dee Atta: And so what does it mean when you end of general support from the original vendor VMware? For Vsphere 7 and V Sphere 8, it needs a couple of things. So customers who have these VMware perpetual licenses, they own them outright, they can continue to use that software for as long as they wish. The difference is they will no longer receive ongoing maintenance unless they transition to Broadcom subscription model, which is costing organizations to Renee’s point, anywhere from 3x to 5x to even 15 times more.
12:44 Dee-Dee Atta: Or they have a choice to move to 3rd party support providers such as Rimini Street. And so this shift represents more than just a pricing change, it’s a fundamental alteration in how customers manage and operate VMware software. So instead of organizations owning licenses outright, organizations may have to start planning for ongoing subscription costs if they decide to remain with VMware that we use annually or even every few years.
13:13 Dee-Dee Atta: So customers with professional licenses will no longer receive new security patches from Broadcom for any of these vSphere 7 or various vSphere 8 vulnerabilities and the vulnerability landscape, which I think we’ll talk about in a few minutes, is escalating. VMware would provide technical guidance, but that’s for a limited time, often two years, and that typically is limited to documentation level assistance rather than active troubleshooting or patch delivery. So in sum, once VMware general support ends, organizations are responsible for maintaining the stability security in compliance of their environments and this is one of the reasons why third party support is emerging as a viable option. Empowering organizations to keep the licenses that they own and have owned for years and they continue to rely upon to run their business. It allows them to remain stability, security and compliance as well.
14:07 Stephen Faig: Absolutely. And the results of this survey really do suggest that organizations are not simply reacting to a licensing change. They’re taking this as an opportunity to rethink long-term infrastructure strategy. So that raises the obvious question, if not VMware, then what? So next we’re going to dive into the rise of multi hypervisor and hybrid strategies here.
14:33 Stephen Faig: Amongst the key findings, 48% do not currently plan to migrate VMware assets to VMware Cloud Foundation. 60% are considering a multi hypervisor strategy within three years. Organizations expect broader adoption of hybrid cloud containers and multiple hypervisors, and key drivers of that include operational efficiency, cloud-native cost reduction and workload flexibility.
15:02 Stephen Faig: Joe with nearly half of VMware perpetual license users saying they do not plan to migrate to VMware Cloud Foundation, we also found that 60% are considering a multi hypervisor strategy. Why are organizations moving in this direction?
15:17 Joe McKendrick: Well, they’re moving in this direction as you indicated, because they want the flexibility and very importantly, they want to avoid vendor lock and know, let’s just say they have been stung by the end of license and cost of relying on a single vendor in this case. And these are the same dynamics basically we’ve seen with cloud implementations in general. It’s a, it’s a good model to look at, you know, and indeed it is a hybrid world these days.
15:44 Joe McKendrick: For some time in cloud computing, we’ve seen multi cloud approaches. It’s only fitting that enterprises also hedge their bets with a multi hypervisor approach, which also caters to the nature of any specific workloads they’re supporting. They can adapt and bring in the vendor, the hypervisor, the tools they need. And again, we’re seeing the we’re seeing some people staying with VMware, of course, or many going with Nutanix Hyper, KVM, you name it.
16:17 Joe McKendrick: And they’re all running nowadays in within the same environment and Speaking of Hyper V, our research shows that 70% do intend to bring Microsoft Hyper V into their environments you know that’s great news for Microsoft, right? Another 30% are bringing in Nutanix. We even see 22% interested in Red Hat Openshift. So it’s a changing market
16:34 Stephen Faig: Yeah, no, folks are certainly looking at alternatives there Renee, as Joe mentioned it looks like organizations really are pursuing greater flexibility versus another form of lock-in. What challenges are enterprising enterprises facing when moving toward multiple hypervisors and other hybrid environments such as cloud?
16:56 Renee Wells: Yeah, it’s different. For context, IT infrastructure and operation leaders historically have not explored IT virtualization alternatives with any sense of urgency, right? VMware, as was mentioned, VMware is a market leader for what, 20 plus years and the technology is stable.
17:16 Renee Wells: The initial challenge for organizations is not between staying on whether or not you know it’s staying on vSphere 7 or 8 forever or migrating it’s today. It’s about buying time and optimizing their existing environment. This is what Rimini Street solutions for VMware specifically designed to do. So we help organizations optimize their existing VMware environment so they can run smoothly, securely as Dee-Dee mentioned before and as well as cost efficiently for years to come.
17:50 Renee Wells: This allows the time that leadership needs to make these careful decisions and evaluate their roadmap options. You know, we also don’t see this one-size-fits-all model when a model when it comes to organizations moving towards like their next generation IT virtualization stack. And the research shows that organizations are considering as Jim mentioned, multiple hypervisors, hybrid cloud and even containers. In our opinion, every witnessing leads to a value. Its own unique challenges and risk.
18:29 Renee Wells: Key considerations include like where do data centers go? Where do the work? Where are the workloads located? Which platform provides the best cost efficiency for them? And then how can Aiops, we’ve talked about AI already, right? How can Aiops improve operational productivity, whether it’s managing multiple technologies such as virtual machines, cloud platforms, and even containers? And this could increase complexity and even create some vendor sprawl.
19:01 Stephen Faig: Sure, no doubt about that, Dee-Dee, the top driver is behind these strategies included operational efficiency, cloud native cost reduction and workload flexibility. Which of these do you see as the strongest driver in the market today?
19:15 Dee-Dee Atta: Oh, no question. Operational efficiency is the strongest driver of IT virtualization strategies and road maps for a very clear reason. It directly dictates an organization’s ability to contain skyrocketing costs, scale without adding headcount and mitigate technical debt.
19:32 Dee-Dee Atta: And so when things like this in terms of price hikes that we’ve talked about today from Broadcom around VMware, it is, Renee said. It sparks the initial conversation to change strategies. But licensing costs alone do not tend to be the primary catalyst for long-term IT virtualization or IT infrastructure strategy. Instead, the long-term success of an IT infrastructure road map will be measured by how effectively it optimizes daily operations across the business.
20:02 Dee-Dee Atta: And this in turn delivers the benefits of a cost reduction and workload flexibility. And it’s for that reason extending the life of vSphere 7, vSphere 8 and your VMware perpetual licenses rather than rushing into a costly or complex data center migration or even re platforming has proven to be a strategically sound decision for many IT organizations. The measurable benefits line cost control, operational stability, which as the research knows is extremely important. Compatibility, strategic flexibility, risk mitigation, skills retention, and vendor independence.
20:38 Stephen Faig: Understood. And let’s face it, greater flexibility really is appealing. It can also introduce new challenges. In fact, the survey found that complexity, security concerns and skills gaps remain significant barriers to virtualization success. I’m going to pull up this next slide. Dee-Dee, 40% of respondents identified operational complexity as their biggest obstacle to achieving virtualization goals. Why is complexity emerging as such a challenge?
21:12 Dee-Dee Atta: As I was talking about previously within 19 virtualization environments, stability, stability and resiliency are the highest forms of performance. And if your virtual infrastructure is running smoothly and meeting business requirements, there may be little benefit but significant risk in migrating prematurely. So each new software version introduces potential integration challenges, hardware compatibility challenges, and even driver incompatibilities especially unique workloads.
21:29 Dee-Dee Atta: Moreover, most third party applications, monitoring tools, database and backup systems remain certified for vSphere 7 or vSphere 8. And moving ahead too quickly can break those dependencies. And so by bringing in integrated proven solutions for VMware, whether it’s Rimini third party support, our remaining protect advanced hypervisor security powered by Vali Cyber, those kinds of capabilities we bring into the environment so IT leaders can conduct their mission, which is to continue to operate smoothly on their current versions without risk or uncertainty.
22:20 Stephen Faig: So, beyond cost, the survey found that multi-vendor management, security concerns, and skill shortages all rank among the top challenges facing IT leaders. What do these findings tell us about the realities of modernizing infrastructure today?
22:37 Joe McKendrick: Yeah, and I wanna echo what Dee-Dee was just describing tells us that technology implementations or migrations are no overnight slam dunks. You know, it’s a long-term process and you need that enterprise especially look for that stability. They can’t just do a swap, a quick swap. We see in our data there’s a need for skills. And I think that’s a key element, you know, having the knowledge either in house or through a partner at the core of this to help with these transitions. And know it’s all about AI these days, of course right. And then we find that in a survey, the great use case for virtualization is to support AI in organizations. And I think it’s really striking that we found only 12% of the managers in our survey can say they mainly have the skills they need to fully implement AI within their IT virtualization frameworks. 12%, we have ways to go and big, big areas.
23:25 Stephen Faig: Absolutely. Yeah. Big area indeed
23:40 Joe McKendrick: And for years. Dee-Dee and Renee have the point that is out as well when VMware ruled the roost. You know, we’ve had a core of operations development professionals who knew VMware as well as the backs of their hands. You know, they were the experts. They are continuing to be experts and Bmware always had good relations with this user communities during its tenure, you know during its days as an independent and with EMC with Dell back to independent. And I always saw this in action at VMWorld.
24:10 Joe McKendrick: Now know we’re seeing the migration, the more diverse and hybrid environments and we need new types of skills. We need skills in various different types of hypervisors. Then there are the AI skills, of course, that’s a biggie. And I believe Dee-Dee mentioned some of the skills areas that are needed, infrastructure, data management and so forth, Containers, that’s another area, cloud platforms, orchestration, storage and the biggie, of course, security and compliance. You need those skills.
24:43 Joe McKendrick: And we saw a lot of enthusiasm for a apps in our survey. AI OPS is a big deal. A lot of people are looking at it and want to bring it in and it will help. It’s going to definitely help. But there’s still an IT, an IT, an AI readiness gap within IT. You IT professionals, even those who are expert at with VMware and understand VMware very well, you know, need to be brought up to speed. So there’s some challenges ahead, Steve.
25:12 Stephen Faig: All great points, Joe. Renee, As organizations move toward multi hypervisor and hybrid environments, how can they avoid increasing complexity as they deploy multiple technology solutions for IT virtualization?
25:26 Renee Wells: Yeah, it’s a timely question. I mean, especially as organizations adopt more hybrid and multi-venture environments because the complexity is one of the biggest challenges that organizations face. What we often see is organizations adopting multiple virtualization as well as cloud technologies to meet different needs. So for example, they may continue running vSphere 7 or 8 for databases. They might deploy say Nutanix for workloads and maybe use like Red Hat Openshift for containerized applications. While this provides flexibility and choice, it can also create some operational challenges like we’ve talked about, it includes fragment and vendor support, separation of monitoring tools and even inconsistent security patching and processes.
26:22 Renee Wells: So rather than managing multiple vendors and technologies, forward-looking enterprises that we see are choosing a single trusted partner to support that entire environment. This simplifies operations and improves consistency and allows the IT teams to focus on business priorities instead of coordinating vendors back and forth. So at Rimini Street, we simplify this multi-platform environment through our Rimini Custom services.
26:52 Renee Wells: It gives customers a single source for support for managed services as well as security across the multiple hypervisors, hybrid cloud and even containers. It really helps IT teams reduce complexity and focus on those strategic initiatives.
27:13 Stephen Faig: Understood. Dee-Dee, the survey found that 77% of respondents value proactive protection against vulnerabilities rather than relying solely on vendor patching, which is a striking finding. Does this signal a broader shift in how organizations approach infrastructure security and resilience?
27:34 Dee-Dee Atta: I would certainly say so, Stephen. It’s really more of a paradigm shift when it comes to IT virtualization. Security is mission critical, yet most organizations are left exposed by slow vendor patching cycles, increased complex threats and rising ransomware risks that target VMware ESXi host environments.
27:56 Dee-Dee Atta: In fact, in 2025 and 2026, the hypervisor has shifted from being a safety net to a primary target for ransomware and state-sponsored attacks. In fact, security researchers have noted that incidences targeting the hypervisor, like VMware ESXi, rose from nearly zero to 25% of all ransomware cases as of late 2025, so proactive protection through advanced runtime hypervisor security is a new paradigm even for CISOs
28:27 Dee-Dee Atta: And at Rimini Street we offer an exclusive product called Rimini Protect Advanced Hypervisor Security that we have developed with our partner Vali Cyber. It’s an industry-first and it is hypervisor secuity designed to proactively defend against ransomware and other common malware attacks targeting any Linux based hypervisor which includes VMware Esxi, it includes Nutanix AHV, it includes Proxmox, it even includes Red Hat.
28:59 Dee-Dee Atta: And so it’s powered by Vali Cyber 0 Lock technology for zero-day runtime, real-time production. And the great thing about this particular solution is there’s no modifications to code required. It operates within the VMware installation bundle within and is deployed through VMware vCenter.
29:19 Stephen Faig: So those concerns around security, operational resilience and support quality help explain another important trend highlighted by the survey, growing interest in third-party support. So in our next slide here, we see that 48% of the respondents are considering third-party support. Joe, were you surprised by that level of interest?
29:41 Joe McKendrick: Not at all. And I might add, you see 18% already have third third party support in place. So we see another 48% contemplating such support. So we’re talking about 66 percent, 2/3 of our group who recognize they simply can’t go it alone and who can blame them, right? This is a certainly common across a lot of technology areas these days. You know, things are just too complex to handle internally, especially within this market with these diverse hypervisor and cloud born environments we’ve been talking about, not to mention the security challenges that go with it.
30:15 Joe McKendrick: And consider this as well, in our survey data, we see service support issues are extremely, extremely common. 1/4 of our organizations, they’re all, they’re all experiencing support issues to some degree. But one third, I mean, 1/4 of our organizations experience support issues every single week or even daily. Every single week, something’s coming up.
30:41 Joe McKendrick: So with this mix of environments or this mix of technologies from vendors and the builds and so forth in these environments, we’re seeing a skills gap and security risk. And keep in mind, security is not for the faint of heart. It requires constant updating of tools, protocols, knowledge refreshes to keep up with the latest threats and the latest fixes and patches and so forth. Should organizations be devoting resources to this? Of course, yes they should, but they need to focus more on their lines of business and not be constantly wrestling with security issues. Let let’s let the experts handle that right?
31:24 Stephen Faig: That makes perfect sense, Joe, Renee, when we asked why organizations are considering third party support, security ranked first at 60%, followed by implement support at 57% and service concerns at 54%. Why do you think those issues are driving interest?
31:46 Renee Wells: Now, these findings reflect a broader shift in enterprise IT priorities. Organizations are looking beyond software maintenance, and they’re focusing on operational resilience, security and business continuity. They, they want flexibility to make technology decisions based on their business needs, not vendor imposed timelines, the fact that security support and service quality topped this list shows an IT leaders are really seeking now for partners who can help them, those that can reduce risk, they can simplify operations and then maximize the value of their existing investments.
32:30 Renee Wells: So we’ve talked about it when IT when it comes to security, organizations increasingly recognize that staying secure doesn’t have to mean constantly upgrading their infrastructure, so many are now looking for those solutions that can protect these environments, especially these hybrid environments while allowing them to run stable and on these proven platforms longer. So this is where you know, Dee-Dee mentioned this as well. You know, this is where our solutions like Rimini Protect Advanced Hypervisor Security come into play. So rather than relying solely on the vendor patch cycles, organizations can now add a proactive runtime security layer that helps protect. Examples like Linux and KVM based hypervisors across these hybrid environments such as VMware, Nutanix, Proxmox, Red Hat and even Citrix.
33:28 Renee Wells: So with our solution, organizations get this an expansive zero day vulnerability protection without touching that underlying hypervisor code. And this approach enables organizations to strengthen their security, address emerging vulnerabilities, and maintain that operational stability without disruption and risk to what’s often associated with those forced vendor upgrade cycles.
33:55 Stephen Faig: Understood. Dee-Dee, many organizations view third party support as a way to buy time and flexibility while evaluating a longer term options. How should IT leaders think about third party support as part of their broader infrastructure strategy?
34:14 Dee-Dee Atta: I think it’s absolutely critical Stephen and IT leaders should view third party support, particularly providers with integrated security and advisory services such as Rimini Street as a lever for liberation, not just for OEM software vendors, but for hardware vendors as well. And 3rd party support is an essential proactive strategy for cost optimization and operational flexibility rather than a temporary fix. We know that IT infrastructure and operations leaders are facing multiple challenges not only from their technology stack and trying to keep that operational, but in terms of the increased threat landscape as well as how to bring all of these different software, hardware compatibilities and integration together.
34:59 Dee-Dee Atta: And so third party support rather than being a temporary fix, it is going to be strategic in terms of determining how are they going to bring these multiple technology approaches and vendors together to power their IT virtualization stack.
35:16 Dee-Dee Atta: Additionally, third party support puts the power back in the hands of organizations to achieve their business imperatives by freeing up budget and resources, whether it’s by reducing maintenance costs significantly, eliminating forced upgrade cycles, and securing long-term support for current systems indefinitely. So in sum, third party support breaks the vendor lock in cycle so organizations can thoughtfully enable a deliberate phase transition based on their desired state and do that within their budgets and timelines.
35:49 Stephen Faig: I’d like to close out our discussion today with one practical take away from each of you. If you’re advising A VMware customer today, what’s the most important action they should take over the next 12 months, Renee?
36:06 Renee Wells: I would say define, define your ideal destination and then recruit the vendor agnostic organization for roadmap guidance. In fact, you can reach out to Rimini Street if your organization is interested in a VMware roadmap or any other type of solution road map because we do provide advisory services for those.
36:31 Stephen Faig: Fantastic. Dee-Dee, what would your recommendation be?
36:36 Dee-Dee Atta: My top recommendation is if you are a VMware user, do not rush into an immediate re platforming decision or engagement or something that is going to set your entire IT budgets out of whack. It’ll be expensive, counter the goals of operational resiliency and potentially disruptive. And so I would investigate third party support and security options to keep your costs under control, remain protected from vulnerabilities, and do what you really want to do is buy time and optionality.
37:08 Stephen Faig: Understood. If you would like to learn more about Rimini Street solutions for VMware users, we will leave this next slide up on the screen while we turn to our Q&A.
37:28 Stephen Faig: So it’s time to dive into questions from our audience today. All right. First question today, what should organizations evaluate first when considering alternatives to VMware?
37:40 Renee Wells: I’ll take that one. All right, before making any technology decisions, organizations should, in my opinion, start by evaluating their strategic options, understanding the trade-offs associated with each one. I think most organizations are considering three primary paths #1. Continuing to run some of all of or all of their existing VMware environments. Is the first thing. Second might be migrating selected workloads to alternative hypervisor platforms, and we’ve named a few of them here on this webinar today. And then probably third would be modernizing through a combination of containers, cloud services, or even open source technologies.
38:29 Renee Wells: The key is not simply choosing a platform. I think it’s determining which approach best aligns with your organization, business goals of whether that’s operational requirements or even your long-term IT strategy. You know, each option should be evaluated across operational resiliency, which talks about cost, the maintenance and support of those technologies, hardware compatibility and then lastly, resources and skill sets that are available to you.
39:03 Stephen Faig: Understood, Dee-Dee, What criteria should be used when evaluating third party VMware support providers?
39:11 Dee-Dee Atta: It’s a great question, Stephen, Thanks for bringing it up. I would say first and foremost, not all third party VMware support providers offer the same value and breadth of capabilities. So VMware infrastructure and virtualized workloads are foundational to any business performance today. Downtime is costly, security risks, particularly the hypervisor layer continue to escalate and noncompliance is just not negotiable.
39:36 Dee-Dee Atta: While there are many third party VMware support providers in the market, there are significant differences and they span areas such as providing global support capabilities at scale, whether they offer service level guarantees and assurances across response times and resolution times if they offer onboarding and archiving services. If they have an ongoing commitment to your success as an organization, doing things such as assigning a client engagement manager, whether or not they have a breadth of services available beyond third party support that are critical to your operations. And those include a lot of the things that we talked about today that include security, threat intelligence, licensing and advisory services for compliance and what happens if you get audited, professional services, web app advisory guidance, performance optimization and custom solutions. And so Rimini Street delivers all of that and more.
40:35 Stephen Faig: Dee-Dee, how can organizations receive guidance on their existing VMware perpetual license entitlements so they remain in compliance?
40:45 Dee-Dee Atta: We see this more and more come up, Stephen. And so what we offer at Rimini Street is we have a dedicated practice called Global license and advisory services staffed by experts who have worked in the software space for a very long time. And what they offer are capabilities to help organizations remain compliant and helping them understand transparency around their licenses and entitlements, help them understand what to do in the case of an audit and support them through an audit process, help them get a handle on their usage assessments and policy compliance.
41:26 Dee-Dee Atta: And so, you know, in the slide that you shared with our Rimini Street website, there’s an area called the Rimini Street Global License and Advisory Practice. And if you go there, you can schedule a complimentary session with one of our experts.
41:37 Stephen Faig: Understood. Well, that is all the time we have today. We apologize that we’re unable to get to all of your questions, but as I stated earlier, all questions will be answered via e-mail and you can find the complete survey report available in the Additional Resources section on the console. I encourage all of you to check it out. A lot of wonderful data and insights in there. So I would like to thank our speakers for joining us today, coming on board and sharing their insights and expertise. Once again, folks, Joe McKendrick, author and lead analyst at Unisphere Research, Renee Wells, Vice President of Product Strategy at Rimini Street and Dee-Dee Atta, Product Marketing Director at Rimini Street.
Speakers
Joe McKendrick
Renee Wells
Dee-Dee Atta
Stephen Faig
Additional resources
