Nine in 10 VMware customers now scan the horizon for alternatives. The reason sits in their renewal notices. Costs have climbed sharply since Broadcom completed its $69 billion purchase of the virtualization giant. A fresh survey lays bare the frustration.

Unisphere Research questioned 269 executives, managers and professionals at VMware-using organizations between December 2025 and February 2026. Third-party support provider The Register reported the results on October 7. Ninety percent cited higher licensing costs as the force pushing them to explore other options. Seventy-three percent named cost savings their top priority in future virtualization decisions.

But. Actual departures remain measured. Forty-eight percent hold no plans to shift any workloads to VMware Cloud Foundation. That platform represents Broadcom’s favored subscription path. And 60 percent eye a multi-hypervisor approach instead of a clean break.

The numbers tell a story of sticker shock mixed with inertia. Broadcom ended sales of new perpetual licenses years ago. Support for older perpetual agreements has faded. Fifty-four percent of survey respondents pointed to that end of support as another trigger to evaluate alternatives. Ars Technica covered the same study the day before. It noted customer reports of price jumps between 100 and 300 percent in many cases. Some saw increases as high as 1,000 percent.

Those extremes don’t hit every account. Yet the direction feels unmistakable. Organizations once comfortable with predictable socket-based licensing now face per-core subscriptions and bundles. Minimum core counts apply. The model favors larger deployments and steers buyers toward comprehensive packages that include tools they may not need.

So operational complexity looms large. Forty percent of those surveyed flagged it as a top barrier to change. Thirty-eight percent worried about managing multiple vendors. Thirty-seven percent each pointed to expanded attack surfaces and the skills required for new teams. The shift demands more than swapping one hypervisor for another. It touches processes refined over years.

Many turn to third-party support in the meantime. Sixty-six percent already use it or consider the option. Security leads their reasons at 60 percent. TechSpot highlighted how customers favor mixes of hypervisors and containers over wholesale replacement. That hybrid thinking reduces risk. It also stretches existing investments.

Broadcom acquired VMware in 2022. The deal closed in late 2023. Almost immediately the new owner streamlined the product catalog. Sales moved to subscriptions. Partners faced tighter rules. Some elite resellers lost authorization for selling VMware services after they offered rival options. SDxCentral reported on the deauthorization of Insight Enterprises in late September. The move reflected a narrower partner strategy.

Analysts track the slow unwind. Gartner sees momentum building but not a stampede. Last month the firm forecast that 55 percent of enterprises will start proofs of concept for alternative distributed hybrid infrastructure by 2029. That figure sits at 25 percent today. The prediction appeared in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for the category. The Register broke it down in September. Even as interest grows, Gartner still ranks the Broadcom unit as a leader in key markets.

Real-world exits show the same caution. Earlier CloudBolt research found 86 percent of North American IT leaders actively shrinking their VMware footprint. Only 4 percent had completed full migrations. Most pursue partial, phased transitions. Those patterns match the new Rimini Street data. Customers test alternatives. They pilot. They modernize gradually. Full rip-and-replace stays rare.

Timeline pressure mounts. vSphere 8 reaches end of general support in October 2027. Many three-year subscriptions signed before the acquisition will expire around then. That convergence could accelerate decisions. Yet the barriers cited in the survey suggest organizations will stretch their current setups as long as possible.

Third-party support offers breathing room. Rimini Street itself provides such services. Its commissioned study naturally highlights the appeal. Joe McKendrick, lead analyst at Unisphere Research, put it plainly in the company’s release. Organizations seek ways to reduce single-vendor dependence while keeping mission-critical systems stable. They want to modernize on their own schedule.

Security concerns run through the responses. Seventy-seven percent in the survey saw value in proactive measures beyond standard patching. That focus aligns with broader enterprise priorities. Expanded attack surfaces from multi-vendor environments only heighten the stakes.

Broadcom has adjusted course at points. It walked back an initial 72-core minimum order after pushback. The floor settled at 16 cores per socket. vSphere Standard may return in subscription form. These tweaks aim to retain smaller customers. Still the overall message from buyers remains consistent. Bills feel heavier. Flexibility feels reduced.

Competitors watch closely. Nutanix, Microsoft, Red Hat and others position their platforms as logical next steps. Container strategies gain ground too. Kubernetes and related tools let teams abstract away from traditional hypervisors. The survey’s 47 percent interest in combining hypervisors with containers points to that evolution.

Data center operators in regulated sectors face extra hurdles. Some cannot easily shift workloads to public cloud. They explore private cloud alternatives or on-premises replacements. The complexity of those moves explains why many plan multi-year transitions. Danish manufacturer Danfoss, for example, works on migrating 1,100 servers through 2027.

Legal and regulatory ripples continue. European cloud groups have challenged the original acquisition. Price complaints reached authorities. Those actions add uncertainty though they have not altered Broadcom’s direction so far.

Enterprise technology leaders now balance two realities. VMware still powers critical infrastructure for most of them. Its stability and feature depth earned that position over decades. Yet the financial pressure forces a reassessment. They audit core counts. They model future costs. They build optionality.

The result looks less like mass abandonment and more like deliberate diversification. Hypervisor counts will rise in many shops. Container adoption will accelerate. Third-party maintenance will extend the life of existing deployments. And Broadcom will keep a sizable base even as it loses some share at the margins.

That outcome fits the pattern of previous vendor consolidations. Customers complain loudly at first. They investigate alternatives with real budgets. Then reality sets in. Migration projects run long. Skills gaps appear. Risk tolerances get tested. Many settle into a mixed environment that trims costs without burning bridges.

Still the survey sends a clear signal. VMware’s installed base has heard the message from its new owner. Loyalty now carries a higher price. How many ultimately pay it will unfold over the next three years. The data so far suggests a slow erosion rather than sudden collapse. Organizations want out. But they move with care.