Following Broadcom: critical choices for VMware clients

Broadcom's acquisition of VMware has led to a complete redesign, including new relationships, pricing schemes, market tactics, and branding. This scenario presents a crucial question for businesses that will be greatly impacted by these changes: what should they do next?

Matt Watts, Chief Technology Evangelist at NetApp, emphasizes the importance of taking a moment to properly evaluate the situation before making significant decisions. He advises against making emotional choices, which are often not the best.

1. Familiarize with VMware Environment: Businesses that heavily depend on VMware should first become familiar with their environment, paying particular attention to 'wastage.' This includes identifying orphan environments and virtual machines using more resources than necessary.

2. Reassess Hypervisor Approach: Given the abundance of alternatives, companies should reevaluate their hypervisor approach. Options include Linux kernel-based virtual machine (KVM), Hyper-V, Proxmox, and Oracle.

3. Explore Cloud Options: Consider whether elements of on-premises VMware-managed environments can be moved to the cloud. This could help mitigate some of the expenses related to on-premises setups, especially for disaster recovery applications.

4. Reassess HCI Implementation: Organizations should think about how they intend to implement hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). While HCI has been beneficial, newer application types relying on AI and advanced analytics may highlight its shortcomings.

Broadcom has recently signed agreements with major hyperscalers to assist with data transfer from on-premises VMware setups to public cloud VMware environments. The initial deal was with Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and more partners and hyperscale clouds are expected to provide similar assistance.

Examining alternatives such as utilizing VMware on Amazon, Microsoft, or Google could help mitigate some of the expenses related to on-premises setups, especially for disaster recovery applications.

While HCI has offered flexible, smaller building blocks for integrated virtual environments, newer application types relying on AI and advanced analytics may highlight its shortcomings.

Converged infrastructure might be advantageous given its higher performance and capacity scalability, and its ability to scale individual components. These systems may accommodate both newer, more modern workloads and traditional workloads using different virtualization providers.

Despite the discomfort and disturbance caused by Broadcom's changes to VMware, there is an opportunity for businesses to improve their IT capabilities.

As enterprises start planning for life with or without VMware and emotions subside, opportunities to enhance business and IT capabilities may become apparent, paving the way for future developments.