Broadcom raised VMware prices. Nine in ten surveyed customers said they weigh alternatives.
Nine out of ten people in a survey of 269 executives, managers and professionals said higher licensing costs were pushing them to consider alternatives to VMware, The Register reported on 7 October.
Unisphere Research ran the survey from December 2025 to February 2026 for Rimini Street, which sells third-party support for enterprise software.
54% named the end of perpetual licence support as a reason to look elsewhere. 60% are considering more than one hypervisor, and 48% said they did not currently plan to move any assets to VMware Cloud Foundation, the bundle Broadcom now sells.
Cloud industry groups ECCO and CISPE said in May 2025 that Broadcom had raised VMware licensing costs to between eight and 15 times their previous levels. Broadcom said it was working to help enterprises "accelerate innovation, provide more choice".
Considering is not leaving. 40% cited operational complexity as a barrier, 38% managing several vendors and 37% team skills. The survey also closed eight months ago.
What would it take for your team to run a second hypervisor in production?
Image: AI-generated.
Sources
Our file on Broadcom
- 17 Sept
Broadcom raised VMware prices by 10x or more, European cloud providers say.
- 16 Sept
Broadcom fixed one critical VMware flaw seven weeks before ransomware arrived.
- 10 Sept
VMware pulled the toolkit rivals used to move customers off it. Without notice.
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