A new survey, sponsored by third-party support firm Rimini Street, reports that nine in ten VMware customers are weighing a move away from the platform as licensing costs rise. The survey also found that nearly half of respondents—48%—have no intention of shifting their workloads to Broadcom's preferred subscription model, which the company has been pushing since acquiring VMware.
The findings paint a picture of widespread dissatisfaction, but the source is a single, vendor-funded study. Rimini Street has a commercial interest in promoting alternatives to VMware's official support and licensing, so the results should be read with that bias in mind. Still, the scale of the numbers—if accurate—suggests that Broadcom's pricing strategy is creating significant churn risk among its installed base.
No independent data is provided to corroborate the survey, and the methodology is not detailed in the source. The only clear takeaway is that a large portion of VMware customers are at least exploring their options, even if the exact percentage remains uncertain. For now, the survey serves as a signal of market sentiment rather than a definitive measurement of customer behavior.