You don't need VCF unless you do

On Monday, Simon Sharwood (Asia Pacific editor at The Register aka 'El Reg') published an article titled Quit VMware and you’ll emerge with more complex and less capable infrastructure. Up front I need to disclose a long-standing personal association with him but more so that I consider him one of the best IT journalists in the industry. His article reports on a Gartner presentation by Paul Delory (someone I worked with at Gartner for many years). The session was called How to Replace VMware in the Enterprise Data Center (see bottom for a copy of the session description; provided here in case it disappears at some point). 'El Reg' can be a little cheeky with their titles but that's not material.

As an ex-Gartner analyst, I'm sufficiently well positioned to comment on how Gartner undertakes research. Likewise, over the years I've had many discussions with seasoned industry experts who voluntarily disclose their respect for The Register. I've been interviewed by them and have read their articles for decades.

As a result of the article, many across the industry have asked my position. The above suggests I am sufficiently well placed to comment. Read on for my take.

Summary (tl;dr)

Almost every considered response to the article that I've seen has some merit

Now that may seem to be fence-sitting but you need to look beyond the headline. A great analyst, Dale Kutnick, founder of META Group, taught his analysts: 'make a call'...so please be patient. As with many things, the truth is somewhere in the middle and context is critical.

Context

Let's start with the protagonists.

• Paul knows virtualisation. I wasn't at his session but the title and description suggest it covered the effort and challenges involved in replacing VMware.

• I trust Simon's reporting. By his own account, the session was not focused on alternatives. It was on replacement. Other sessions at the conference covered competitors.

Virtified's position

1. VMware reduction and replacement share some overlaps but will lead to fundamentally different outcomes.

   
   

   1. Until you eliminate VMware you will be continue to be subject to Broadcom's licensing and pricing. This applies equally, and often more so, for those using CA or any other Broadcom software.

   2. All existing evidence of Broadcom's behaviour suggests you will pay more each renewal and largely irrespective of how much you use. This negates much of the potential benefit of reducing.

      
      

2. Organizations that decide to reduce their VMware footprints will emerge with more complex infrastructure. Much of the industry will end up in this position; Virtified's statistically-valid and self-funded primary research (n=450) shows that approximately one-half of medium and large organisations plan to reduce their VMware footprint before 2028.

   
   

3. You can successfully mitigate the impact of the extra complexity. Any reduction will require heterogenous management because the result is a multi-platform environment. The alternative is siloed management and duplicated effort. If you acknowledge this:

   1. You will be in a better position to begin to mitigate any potential loss of capability.

   2. You can begin planning to successfully reduce your dependence.

Heterogenous solutions exist and more will emerge to address this need. Morpheus, now part of HPE, is one such example.

4. All of the above has precedent (example: approximately four out of five medium and large organisations are multicloud). It has and can be done.

Recommendations

4. If you acknowledge that complexity is the price of replacement or reduction, Virtified asserts that the following architectural sequence is required to reduce the impact:
   

   1. Start with the control plane. That means vCenter, vRealize, Aria etc. This is a critical step. Heterogenous management is essential.

   2. Eliminate Tanzu at any stage. Experimentation was moderate but large-scale production deployment was low.

   3. If necessary, remove NSX. This is the most 'sticky'.

   4. Determine the impact to existing storage. This includes external storage hardware compatibility (potentially fibre channel) and/or vSAN migration.

   5. The last step is the virtualisation layer (vSphere). This must be the finish not the start although experimentation and low-risk reduction is recommended. Similar to storage hardware, asset lifecycles / refresh and hardware certification will be key factors driving timeframes. However, steps (a) through (d) will keep you busy likely for 2 - 4 years.

Alternatives

vSphere Enterprise Plus was deployed in most enterprises whether it was needed or not. Why? They were paying for it. Too many VMware customers became fat and lazy, conditioned by the dicates of their enterprise licence agreement (ELA). They chose the premium virtualisation platform and settled on the 'highest common denominator'. But the situation has now become worse.

Many organisations tell Virtified that VCF was thrust upon them whether they wanted it or not

This was among Broadcom's most cunning acts. As can be inferred from our recommendations, VMware's portfolio evolved to become four different solutions (management, network, storage and compute). But, pre-Broadcom, VMware never managed to attract sufficient adoption beyond vSphere, vCenter and (in some cases) vSAN. Broadcom doesn't give VMware customers a choice. VCF compels them to deploy everything. Admittedly, Broadcom has invested to improve the integration between what were disparate and loosely-integrated products.

Competitors are right to call out that there are credible VMware alternatives. Virtified Loops suggest that there are serious contenders. Alongside VMware we have evaluated virtualised and hyperconverged infrastructure (VHCI) offerings from Canonical, Microsoft, Nutanix, Oracle, Platform9, Proxmox, Red Hat, VATES and Verge. With proper due diligence, all can reduce the dependence on VMware.

There are valid software-based alternatives. Their suitability will depend upon your needs and goals. Unfortunately too many organisations remain blissfully unaware of how their success will depend upon this.

Virtified research shows that 76% of organisations agree that alternative VHCI software vendors can meet most of their current needs

There are cloud-based alternatives. Their suitability will depend upon your needs (including the ability for you to use cloud, which can be a function of technical and compliance requirements). Hyperscalers have been successfully migrating VMware workloads for over a decade.

The biggest competitor for VMware alternatives is organisations that 'do nothing' - Anonymous (see note b at bottom)

The challenge, as Paul pointed out, is that finding and successfully migrating to a replacement is more difficult. You need to take a step-by-step approach and accept the pain along the way.

The good news is that I've started to see the first successful examples of large-scale replacement. There will be more.

Final note: the importance of independence

In no set order, and broader in scope than the above, but important nonetheless:

I refute any assertion that Simon’s reporting is unduly influenced by commercial interests. While The Register’s business model relies on advertising, their editorial strength lies in maintaining a fiercely independent voice—an increasing rarity as other revenue sources for journalism evaporate. Similarly, while I have legitimate concerns at some aspects of Gartner’s published research and process, I refute the 'cash-for-comment' narrative.

The 'cash-for-comment' allegations leveled at Gartner and The Register within the comments section of the article are, in my view, misplaced. No doubt these comments reflect exposure to vendor spin and industry hype. This is understandable but their opinions are misplaced in this situation. There were also cheap shots at Gartner and no doubt Paul would scream out about all the nuances that couldn't be covered in a 45 minute group presentation.

Bottom line: the IT industry needs strong independent voices backed by fact-based research with sufficient diversity

Both Gartner and The Register serve this purpose (not exclusively but certainly among the best).

Virtified aspires to do and be the same (perhaps adding a little oversight along the way).

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Notes:

a. The details on Paul's session are copied verbatim below.

How to Replace VMware in the Enterprise Data Center

Paul Delory, VP Analyst,Gartner

Broadcom's acquisition of VMware has increased prices, uncertainty and risks. Many VMware customers are looking for alternatives. We discuss a detailed, step-by-step plan for migrating off VMware. This includes scoping the move, selecting alternatives, designing and sizing, replacing missing capabilities, migrating VMs, optimizing both new and any remaining VMware environments, and translating operations.

b. I'm anonymising the source of this quote only to avoid potential blowback (but I have let them know)