We are multiple years into the shifting VMware licensing realm, and the surprises keep coming. This is because most IT leaders don’t feel the full impact until renewal hits, and by then, options are limited, and decisions are rushed.
The impact at renewal? Broadcom’s changes to VMware licensing are said to be driving 2x–10x renewal increases, limiting flexibility, and forcing infrastructure decisions across nearly every VMware environment.
This article briefly explains what changed, but the more interesting parts are how you can embrace this as an opportunity to evolve and the role a Bluewave Solution Advisor can play via a VMware Impact Assessment.
To catch up, read The Big Change to VMware: What you need to know.
Primary next step: Schedule your VMware Impact Assessment with Bluewave to understand your exposure and options before renewal dictates the outcome.
The Broadcom acquisition of VMware has fundamentally reshaped the economics and structure of VMware licensing. These shifts center around:
Per-core subscriptions: Perpetual licenses are being replaced by mandatory subscription models billed per core, which can dramatically increase base costs in many environments.
Forced bundling: Standalone products have been absorbed into larger SKUs, so you are often paying for capabilities you do not need or use.
Partner ecosystem cuts: Broadcom has reduced the reseller and cloud service partner ecosystem, shrinking the pool of support and advisory options many customers relied on.
Pricing shock: Organizations continue to see big increases at renewal; some organizations are reporting 5x+ jumps.
| Change | Impact |
| Subscription-only Licensing | No new perpetual licenses; ongoing costs rise |
| Essentials Plus Kit Retired | Higher entry costs for small deployments |
| Per-Core Licensing (16-core min) | Increases cost for low-core CPUs |
| Major Product EOLs | vSphere 7.x, vSAN 7.x, and other require urgent upgrades |
| Centralized Downloads | Secure, tokenized downloads; old URLs expired on April 24, 2025 |
| Price Increases | Substantial cost hikes for many organizations |
| Product SKU Consolidation | Fewer choices, more bundled features |
| Terminated Legacy VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) Agreements | By moving to an exclusive, invite-only model focused on “VMware Cloud Foundation” (VCF), VMware shrunk purchasing paths for customers. |
Too often, organizations focus on the cost increase related to the renewal rather than looking at this as an opportunity to re-envision their infrastructure strategy. To capitalize on this as a transformation play, we recommend you first assess the following:
Every organization, regardless of size or industry, is effectively choosing between four paths when it comes to VMware.
| Path | When It Fits Best | Primary Focus |
| Stay on VMware | Heavy VMware dependencies, near-term contractual obligations, limited appetite for major change | Optimize licensing, right-size architecture, negotiate renewal terms, and reduce cost exposure |
| Hybrid cloud strategy | Starting or accelerating a cloud journey; mix of regulated or latency-sensitive workloads and more portable apps | Selective workload migration to public cloud while maintaining on-prem VMware where it makes sense |
| Selective workload migration | Licensing costs are a concern, but a full exit isn’t feasible; DR, dev/test, or non-critical workloads are portable | Shift lower-risk workloads to an alternative hypervisor to reduce cost exposure while keeping production stable |
| VMware exit | Licensing costs are prohibitive; workloads are portable; modernization is a strategic priority | Full migration to alternative platforms or cloud-native infrastructure, with a deliberate, phased roadmap |
There is no one-size-fits-all answer. The right path depends on your environment, risk tolerance, compliance requirements, and modernization goals.
One strategic pathway that’s getting more attention lately is diversifying your hypervisor strategy. There have, rightly so, been a lot of concerns from organizations considering a switch to another hypervisor:
Security and Compliance
Security tooling currently running on VMware may not be compatible with a new hypervisor. Security tools that use VMware-native features, like vSphere-based VM encryption or guest introspections APIs will need to be revalidated and potentially replaced or reconfigured.
Compatibility
When migrating off VMware, organizations frequently discover that virtual appliances distributed as OVAs—security tools, network monitoring appliances, or third-party software delivered as pre-packaged VMs—can’t easily be dropped into platforms like Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, or Proxmox without a manual conversion process that’s not guaranteed to work. On top of this, many vendors only officially support their appliances on specific hypervisors, putting you at risk of running an unsupported configuration.
Support
One underestimated risk when migrating to a new hypervisor is the organizational knowledge gap that opens when teams who have spent years mastering VMware’s ecosystem suddenly find themselves responsible for managing a different platform. VMware has a deep, mature ecosystem and that institutional knowledge doesn’t transfer, which means longer resolution times, more escalations to vendors, and a higher likelihood of misconfigurations that create security or availability risks.
We’d advise any organization considering migrating some or all workloads to a new hypervisor to keep these items in mind, but more than a year after the big VMWare changes were announced, the market has rapidly matured. Engineering teams now have many viable off-ramps without sacrificing enterprise support.
We are seeing clients successfully lab-test and deploy diverse stacks—from managed service providers offering turnkey Proxmox environments, to Platform9’s SaaS-managed KVM control planes, and Apache CloudStack for robust IaaS—proving you can regain control of your infrastructure without taking on the operational nightmare of open-source management.
For many organizations, VMware disruption becomes the trigger for broader infrastructure modernization—an opportunity for an IT leader to reenvision their strategy.
We’ve seen this manifest in VMware strategizing becoming a catalyst for:
Data center exit: Rationalizing and consolidating infrastructure that no longer needs to be on-prem.
Disaster recovery modernization (DRaaS): Moving to modern DRaaS solutions with improved RTO/RPO and ransomware resilience.
Backup and cyber resilience: Implementing next-gen backup, immutable storage, zero-trust, and ransomware recovery architectures.
Cloud FinOps: Establishing ongoing cloud cost governance and optimization practices.
AI-ready infrastructure: Building GPU-ready compute and data pipelines to support emerging AI workloads.
A core element of how Bluewave works with clients is our Assess | Advise | Advocate framework. When it comes to VMware, we leverage this model to conduct a VMware Impact Assessment to help clients select the right strategic path for their business.
Through this Assessment, we cover five core components, including:
The outcome is a clear blueprint that eliminates guesswork and defines the business case for key stakeholders, such as finance.
The legacy VMware model is leaving. By 2027, most organizations will be forced into a new path one way or another.
The difference is straightforward:
Teams that start 6–12 months before renewal have time to:
We’ve seen that teams who wait often underestimate migration timelines and dependency complexity, and whose organizations are then punished by higher costs.
When the infrastructure market shifts this fast, it is easy to get pulled into vendor-driven decisions that may not fit your environment, timeline, or business goals. Bluewave helps you cut through the noise and move forward with clarity.
We work as an independent niche consultant, bringing objective guidance, practical insight, and active advocacy throughout the decision process. That includes helping you evaluate infrastructure options, model the financial impact of renewal versus change, build a migration path that reduces risk, and make sure disaster recovery stays aligned every step of the way.
Whether the right move is to stay, optimize, or migrate, our role is to help you make the decision with confidence and build a strategy that works for your business.
Let’s Start Now! Schedule Your VMware Impact Assessment
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