Exploring New Horizons in Hypervisors: Beyond VMware

Under Broadcom’s ownership, VMware has shifted from a perpetual licensing model to mandatory subscriptions, leading to substantial cost increases for many customers. This transition has been particularly challenging for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), who now face higher costs for bundled subscriptions that include products they don’t need. Enterprise edge customers are also reconsidering their options due to the high prices of the new licensing bundles.

For example, as of early 2025, Ingram Micro, the world’s second-largest technology distributor, announced it will cease doing business with Broadcom and will limit its engagement with VMware in select regions. The distributor emphasized the need for Broadcom to either empower their distributors to make quotes or to significantly increase their sales force to handle every quote request from partners or end users, noting that the average time from deal registration to receiving a quote from a distributor is currently four weeks.

IT leaders have several key factors to consider as they explore their alternatives, with reports indicating that over half of VMware customers are contemplating leaving the Broadcom-owned platform.

Understanding the broader challenges

VMware’s pricing changes come during a time when most organizations are investigating how to deploy AI on-site. Simultaneously, IoT implementations are exploding, so the need for real-time data processing is becoming increasingly crucial, and putting IT decision-makers in a tough spot when considering a pivot. This shift affects how organizations design their infrastructure and deploy applications. However, this is not the only concern.

Edge computing sites present unique infrastructure challenges, such as intermittent connectivity, latency, bandwidth limitations and hardware constraints, all of which must be addressed to ensure reliable, real-time application performance.

Additionally, IT leaders must tackle several critical edge data management issues including deciding which data should remain on-site, be archived in the cloud, backed up to a data center, or deleted entirely. Further, for sectors where access to real-time data is mission-critical like retail, healthcare, manufacturing and utilities, the outcomes of these decisions are significant.

For SMB and enterprise edge users, even those investing in innovative smart devices that require high-performance remote infrastructure, what other options exist if VMware is no longer a viable choice?

Hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solutions are the key. These solutions are built for the edge, simple to scale and manage, and deliver the high availability and flexibility necessary to meet evolving business demands.

The evolving world of HCI

Broadcom’s modifications to VMware have posed significant challenges for SMB and enterprise-edge customers, but they have also paved the way for other vendors to introduce alternative HCI solutions that cater to their needs.

HCI merges computing, networking and storage resources into a unified and streamlined architecture. This allows organizations to run essential applications at individual sites while maintaining a cloud connection if necessary.

While traditional data center architectures rely on dedicated hardware devices for storage and networking, HCI offers simplified hardware and software components. These components integrate traditional datacenter hardware into a virtualized appliance managed by a software layer. Typically, this setup includes industry-standard x86 servers, a hypervisor, and software-defined storage, with operational functions distributed across the cluster by software running on each server node.

By consolidating hardware, SMBs and enterprise edge users gain the high availability performance they need, exactly where it’s required. Additionally, it allows them to scale resources in response to dynamically changing demands and address specific infrastructure priorities.

Moreover, HCI centralizes and simplifies the management of environments, reducing the physical space needed for computing, networking and storage. It consumes less power, is easier to cool, and is less likely to require maintenance or spare parts compared to legacy technologies.

A smart solution for SMBs and edge environments

As businesses look for alternatives to VMware that provide the necessary performance, flexibility and more affordable pricing models, they will be drawn to flexible HCI solutions that avoid the pitfalls of overpriced or excessive setups.

HCI’s ease of use enables SMBs to have it installed by general IT personnel within an hour. This fast setup helps new sites become operational quickly, providing the benefits of reduced downtime and improved business agility.

Subsequently, centralized management tools negate the need for onsite engineering visits, while HCI software tools ensure that compute and storage resources are allocated and balanced to achieve the desired performance. Furthermore, extra infrastructure resources can be deployed instantly, mitigating the risk of overprovisioning.

With HCI, enterprises that have multiple edge locations can efficiently and cost-effectively manage and secure data and applications across dozens, hundreds or even thousands of sites. By enhancing reliability and simplifying management, HCI enables organizations to prioritize core strategic objectives like driving innovation, enhancing customer experiences and scaling operations efficiently.

To facilitate a smooth transition and select an HCI solution that best meets their needs, organizations should first evaluate the VMware software features they currently use and their application within the business. This will enable them to compare if alternative solutions can match their unique requirements.

Article Topics

Broadcom  |  edge software  |  HCI  |  hyperconverged infrastructure  |  StorMagic  |  VMWare