In 2023 Broadcom acquired VMware and one of its first major moves was to scrap VMware’s perpetual licensing model and replace it with a subscription-based model. This shift has had a direct financial impact on VMware customers, with many experiencing cost increases ranging from 300% to 1050% depending on their previous licensing agreements.
For CEOs, CTOs, and CFOs, this change presents an unexpected dilemma: absorb these rising costs, renegotiate contracts with uncertain terms, or explore alternative solutions. Unsurprisingly, many businesses are now seriously considering shifting away from VMware entirely. If you are a VMware customer, you should definitely consider whether you should stay with VMware or fly away.
Due to these changes, AWS has emerged as a compelling choice for organisations looking to move away from VMware - not only for cost savings but also for modernisation and long-term scalability.
Why Move to AWS?
Migrating away from VMware may seem daunting, but it’s also an opportunity to rethink your infrastructure strategy and embrace a more cost-effective, scalable, and innovative cloud model.
First, let’s talk about the elephant in the room: VMware licensing costs. Broadcom’s elimination of perpetual licences means recurring fees for VMware products. Moving to AWS avoids these costs entirely while benefiting from a more transparent, pay-as-you-go pricing model. Whether you’re using VMware solutions such as vSphere or maintaining a dedicated infrastructure for managing VMware nodes, you usually need to factor in additional licensing and operational costs. In our experience, managing the hardware and patching the hypervisor in VMware are pain points among engineers. Conversely, AWS offloads the dedicated infrastructure - especially if you’re using AWS’s managed services - and allows you to pay only for the services that you use rather than being charged high upfront costs.
Beyond cost savings, AWS offers a pathway to modernisation. Instead of simply lifting and shifting your VMware workloads, you can leverage AWS cloud-native services. These services reduce operational overhead, increase efficiency, and enable companies to build for the future rather than remaining tied to legacy VMware environments. One use case we often see with our customers is the ability to easily implement a disaster recovery plan on AWS for workloads previously running on VMware infrastructure which had no automatic failover and no disaster recovery plan in case of a technical failure. In AWS, you can leverage a managed service like AWS Backup to implement a backup and recovery strategy with little effort and time.
In terms of scalability and flexibility, VMware’s pricing model often requires businesses to purchase more licences than they actually need and can only scale to what the current hardware and licences allow. Testing on different CPU architectures and storage options also usually requires purchasing the required CPU and storage. AWS, on the other hand, allows you to scale up or down based on demand without worrying about expensive licensing commitments or limited storage options.
How easy is it to migrate to AWS?
AWS understands that businesses have a huge investment in VMware workloads, which is why they provide several tools to simplify the migration from VMware to AWS. These tools help ensure a smooth migration process and allow to transition to AWS without disrupting mission-critical applications.
AWS provides the following migration tools:
- AWS Application Migration Service: Helps you migrate your VMware workloads to AWS and is suitable for both lift-and-shift and re-architect migration strategies.
- VM Import/Export: Enables you to easily import virtual machine images from your existing environment to Amazon EC2 instances.
- Amazon Elastic VMware Service: Allows you to run VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) directly within the Amazon VPC and smooths a lift-and-shift migration using VMware tools.
If you feel the pain of increasing VMware licensing costs, you are not alone. Companies like Rackspace are already moving workloads off VMware to address skyrocketing costs and rigid subscription models imposed by the Broadcom acquisition. If you’re considering making the move from VMware to the cloud, now is the time.
Facing soaring VMware licensing costs? We specialise in seamless migrations from VMware to AWS, offering scalable, cost-effective, and secure cloud solutions. We ensure minimal disruption and access to AWS funding programs. Book a free chat to find out how we can help.
This blog is written exclusively by The Scale Factory team. We do not accept external contributions.
