VMware Freedom – How Some are Turning Ransom into Opportunity

What’s happening with VMware right now is not a refresh cycle, even though some organizations are treating it that way. A refresh cycle typically doesn’t come as a surprise and usually comes with expanded capabilities at a smaller relative price.

Broadcom is sending a bill, a stopwatch, and a ransom note.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: For organizations willing to look past the panic, this moment isn’t just disruption—it’s an opportunity. Let’s not minimize it:

• Costs went up—materially. We are seeing increases of 5X, 8X, to 10X in some cases.
• Timelines shrank. Most refresh cycles have likely been cut in half (at least).
• Choice narrowed. Low-end options (vSphere Essentials and Enterprise Plus) have been removed, forcing modest footprints into higher tiers.
• Emergency Timing. Teams are reacting to unbudgeted, unplanned activity, many times for workloads and infrastructure that may not be strategic.

The technical debt clock is ringing, and it’s getting the CFO’s attention. That is where the opportunity begins.

Step One: Take the Pressure Off

Most customers have a desire to re-platform, refactor, or leverage public cloud, but they share a common challenge: Time.

For customers with perpetual licensing, this is where Third-Party Support (TPS) enters the chat—quietly, pragmatically, and without pretending it’s a silver bullet. Third-party VMware support doesn’t modernize your stack or magically fix architectural sins committed in 2013.

What it does do is:

This isn’t avoidance; it’s control and leverage.

Step Two: Explore Creative Financial Options

Old habits die hard, and many infrastructure teams will be tempted to view this crisis as “just another form of refresh.” But many organizations have value in their stack that can be purchased and leased back, clearing up budget and transitioning some of the estate from CapEx to OpEx.

Under the right circumstances, this approach can:

• Re-hydrate IT budgets instead of draining them.
• Create opportunities to leverage savings into tech-debt removal.
• Be open to new ideas—some customers are even selling their data centers through this approach!

This isn’t “sexy,” unless you like reducing budgets and freeing up capital … wait, that is sexy.

Step Three: Let’s Be Honest… It’s Just a Hypervisor

There was a time when virtualization was Jedi magic, but now it’s easily replaced, even with open source. A meaningful percentage of VMware workloads are near end-of-life, kept alive by inertia, not value.

VMware footprints can be reduced, or hypervisors can be replaced:

• Reduce your footprint to run on fewer cores.
• Replace your hypervisor with lower-cost or open-source options.
• Migrate to managed or hosted versions of your VMware stack.

Sometimes, you don’t modernize for elegance; you look for the easiest way to support workloads that don’t deserve modernization.

Conclusion: Be Open, Curious, and Creative

Many VMware customers will pay the ransom and plan a move to an alternative commercial on-premises solution (e.g., Nutanix, Hyper-V) or the public cloud. But for those open to being creative, there is an opportunity to completely transform how you finance, budget, and operate.

Broadcom didn’t create your technical debt; they invoiced you for it. Faced with 5X to 10X costs for yesterday’s tech stack, a crisis starts to resemble something far more exciting: an opportunity to build new muscles and operate differently.

About Tim Currie

Tim is the Director of Strategy for In Balance IT Solutions. He helps IT leaders make the hard decisions that future-proof their organizations. Whether it’s navigating a hostile renewal or architecting a cloud exit, Tim provides the pragmatic, vendor-agnostic playbooks that teams need to move fast without breaking things.