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By: Tom Ricardo | Oxford Global Resources | Practice Director, Cloud and Cybersecurity
In November 2023, Broadcom acquired VMware in a $61 billion deal, leading to some ripple effects for VMware customers. Since the acquisition closed, companies, particularly small to mid-sized enterprises and public institutions, have faced significant licensing disruptions.
Broadcom transitioned VMware from perpetual licenses to subscription-based bundles, requiring minimum core-based licenses (e.g., 16 cores per CPU) and eliminating legacy discounts. So, while Broadcom has welcomed the VMware customer base, rising costs, mandatory long-term contracts, and the lack of a partner ecosystem have left some former VMware loyalists ready to move on.
For many enterprises, annual VMware costs have ballooned eight to 15 times prior levels. For those who don’t mind the price increases, Broadcom remains a legitimate choice, and recent earnings reports show that the company is doing exceptionally well, with total revenues of $51.6 billion ($2.7 billion of that number is attributed to software sales).
For others, the heightened costs threaten the bottom line, with small and medium organizations taking the brunt of the blow. Some of these companies reported 400-600% increases and imminent vendor lock-ins without assurances of continued support and development within the VMware product line, which Broadcom has already shrunk.
At the same time, Broadcom halved VMware’s workforce, scaled back partner ecosystems, and began enforcing long-term agreements that reduce flexibility for users. Companies are being asked to make long-term, costly commitments without a comparable trade-off from Broadcom. This merger, while promising growth for Broadcom, has left many VMware customers dissatisfied and seeking viable alternatives to sustain their virtual environments.
Fortunately, competition is gaining traction from alternative hypervisors, open-source platforms, and solutions tailored to public clouds.
How Did Broadcom Singlehandedly Shift the Future of Virtualization?
The acquisition was heralded as a strategic move to expand Broadcom’s software portfolio. But with many VMware users feeling the financial pinch and rigidity of the new terms, the shift in customer sentiment has fueled the demand for competitors, with various platforms capitalizing on their discontent.
According to a post-acquisition survey conducted by Garner’s Peer Community, 74% of IT leaders are actively exploring or piloting non-VMware virtualization platforms, with some contenders in the virtualization market experiencing notable growth in new deployments. Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, thereby, undeniably reshaped the landscape, creating opportunities for opponents to capture market share.
In response to mounting pressure from disgruntled customers, alternative hypervisors, such as Microsoft’s Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer, are gaining traction due to their cost-effectiveness and streamlined management features. Open-source platforms like KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) and Proxmox VE have also garnered attention for their adaptability and community-driven support.
Additionally, public cloud-specific solutions offered by industry giants such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) present compelling options for organizations seeking scalable and integrated virtual environments. Beginning in the latter part of 2023, these companies reported year-on-year growth of 20% or more in enterprise migrations from traditional virtualization stacks, with generative AI also playing a significant role in market acceleration. Public cloud solutions offer flexible pricing models and a rich ecosystem of partners and services, catering to the diverse needs of modern enterprises.
Organizations will likely continue prioritizing flexibility, cost–efficiency, and innovation in their virtualization solutions, driving demand for optimal virtual environments, including those with diverse and adaptable platforms. And Broadcom, while currently excelling in its financial performance, faces the challenge of addressing customer concerns to maintain its leadership in the ever-evolving virtualization arena.
The Elasticity You Asked for Has Arrived
One such competitor is already capitalizing on the shift in the virtualization landscape. In August 2025, Amazon Web Services announced that Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS) is now “generally available,” marking a significant milestone for organizations looking to modernize their virtualization strategies in the cloud. This new service aims to offer enterprises a unified path for migrating and managing their VMware-based workloads directly on the AWS platform, combining the features of VMware’s enterprise virtualization stack with AWS’s proven scalability and global reach.
EVS provides a fully managed approach to running VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) within an AWS VPC, eliminating the need for re-platforming or refactoring applications. Allowing seamless re-platforming onto AWS’ environment with VCF license portability, including on-demand or reserved pricing models (with one- and three-year terms), businesses can avoid being locked into the VMware Enterprise agreement. Now it is possible to run a VMware stack on dedicated AWS metal instances with AWS dynamic resource modelling. Businesses can grow or shrink as needed while enjoying seamless integration with AWS resources, such as S3, Amazon FSx, RDS, Bedrock, and Q for Business, making them ideal for organizations that are beginning to modernize their infrastructure stack.
With EVS, companies can benefit from enhanced performance, streamlined operations, and the flexibility to scale resources according to evolving demands, thereby harnessing the full power of both VMware and AWS in a unified environment.
Amazon Elastic VMware Service is not a lightweight wrapper around nested virtualization. It’s built for production-grade workloads with full integration of VMware’s core enterprise stack and AWS’s metal-level performance.
Key features include:
Compute: i4i.metal Instances
- Built on Intel Xeon Scalable (Ice Lake) processors
- Up to 128 vCPUs, 1 TiB RAM, and 75 Gbps networking
- NVMe SSD-backed storage: optimized for low-latency, high-throughput operations (ideal for SAP, Data Warehouses, etc.)
Storage: VMware vSAN with Elastic Options
- EVS uses VMware vSAN for HCI-style local storage, but you can extend with:
- Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (snapshots, replication, NFS/CIFS)
- Amazon S3 for archive-tier storage
- EBS volumes for additional performance layers
Networking: High-Performance NSX + AWS Direct Connect
- Fully integrated VMware NSX stack: L2-L7 firewalling, overlays, micro-segmentation
- Optionally peer EVS VPC to other AWS workloads
- AWS Direct Connect or VPN for hybrid operations with on-prem data centers
- Cloud connectivity tools like Equinix, Megaport, and Alkira to connect a multi-cloud environment
Operations: vCenter + CloudWatch + Terraform
- Maintain vCenter single pane of glass
- Monitor VMs with Amazon CloudWatch, including custom metrics
- Automate deployment with Terraform, CloudFormation, or vRealize Automation
Security & Compliance
- Integrated with AWS IAM and CloudTrail
- EVS environments can align with HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001, and FedRAMP
- Run security appliances, AWS ISV partners like Palo Alto, Fortinet, or Check Point, inline or integrate with AWS Network Firewall
Deployment and Maintenance
- Self-service cluster provisioning via AWS Console or API
- AWS lifecycle maintenance of underlying infrastructure, including hardware failures, patching, and upgrades
- Opt into AWS Managed Services or continue with internal VMware-certified resources
Bridging the Gap: How EVS Answers the Squeeze
Broadcom’s licensing shift has forced organizations into a corner—stripping away cost predictability and platform choice. AWS EVS allows businesses to keep what works with VMware while embracing the agility, resilience, and cost model of the cloud. This is the elasticity companies have been begging for: predictable, portable, scalable VMware that doesn’t demand re-platforming or refactoring to get started.
Pain points under Broadcom VMware include:
- Explosive licensing costs and a bundled subscription model
- Vendor lock-in and long-term inflexible contracts
- Reduced innovation and product discontinuation
- Workforce reductions in VMware support and services
Amazon EVS addresses these pain points by enabling users to:
- Retain VCF licensing (no forced re-license or bundle)
- Migrate to AWS with flexible consumption and easier exit paths
- Access AWS innovation and global infrastructure from Day 1
- Achieve operational continuity with familiar tooling and full integration into AWS
Navigating Complexity, Risk, and Opportunity when Transitioning to Virtual Alternatives
Although there are benefits, transitioning to a new or different virtualization platform is rarely straightforward. Moving to platforms like Amazon EVS involves more than a simple lift-and-shift migration. There are various complexities, risks, and strategic considerations.
Some things businesses can do to mitigate challenges and prepare for success include:
- Assess the current infrastructure and legacy application/database compatibility for virtualization.
- Develop a strategic migration plan with clear goals, realistic timelines, and required resources.
- Evaluate hardware and investment needs.
- Ensure staff possess necessary skills through training or external consultants.
- Map application dependencies and plan for legacy system optimization.
- Establish and update security baselines to meet regulatory requirements.
- Benchmark performance and validate reliability for mission-critical workloads.
- Design redundancy and business continuity plans.
- Consider scalability, cost efficiency, and cloud-native integration when choosing platforms.
- Adopt unified management tools for multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
- Regularly review platform choices to avoid vendor lock-in and support long-term resilience.
Oxford Can Help
If you need support transitioning your VMware environment to AWS, Oxford can help. We are equipped to guide you every step of the way. Backed by a strong partnership with AWS, our team brings proven expertise and hands-on experience in designing, implementing, and optimizing cloud solutions tailored to your organization’s needs. Whether you are just beginning to explore the cloud or are well into your migration journey, we ensure seamless integration, robust security, and operational excellence throughout the process.
With Oxford, you’ll gain a competitive advantage through our deep understanding of both traditional and modern IT infrastructures. We help you navigate the complexities of AWS migration, from compliance and scalability to automation and cost-efficiency. Our expert consultants remain engaged from the initial planning stages through post-migration support, ensuring that your organization is positioned for long-term success and resilience in an ever-evolving digital landscape.
