A recently conducted survey of hundreds of VMware customers sheds light on growing concerns they have about the state of the virtualization software and the company behind it – ranging from rising licensing costs, ransomware vulnerabilities and a diminishing quality of support.

VergeIO, the Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) company, spent two months surveying and conducting in-person interviews with hundreds of existing VMware customers. The results of the research have been released in a report entitled, “State of the VMware Customer.”

Among the key issues found were:

• Pricing Concerns – 84% of respondents indicated that they were concerned about VMware’s current and future costs, with many highlighting “per-core” renewal quotes and licensing agreements that require a commitment to year-over-year spending increases as additional points of distress.
• Ransomware Resiliency – With a rise in ransomware attacks exploiting specific VMware vulnerabilities, 77% of customers worried about their data resiliency. A number of those interviewed indicated that their VMware environments had already suffered a ransomware attack, with recovery efforts taking more than 2 weeks despite having reasonable backup procedures in place.
• Technical Support – 60% of customers expressed their concern with VMware’s ability to provide high-quality technical support, with those interviewed stating the difficulty in receiving support via phone calls. Others lamented slow response times to emails during outages.

These survey results also come amidst rumors of VMware focusing on major enterprise accounts with a shift towards a more expensive pricing model post the Broadcom acquisition. Because of these concerns, more than 87% of respondents indicated that they are currently researching alternative infrastructure platforms to VMware.

While rising prices were a top issue among VMware customers, a vast majority indicated that they are unwilling to sacrifice capabilities in order to save money. Top priorities of VMware replacement from those surveyed were seamless migration (76%), ability to use existing hardware (72%) and the desire to do more with that existing hardware (61%).

“Even before the Broadcom acquisition, customers have had concerns about VMware’s pricing strategy and pace of development,” said George Crump, VergeIO CMO. “VMware has built its offering through a series of technology acquisitions, resulting in a solution that is bloated, complex and expensive. VergeIO takes a different approach. VergeOS’ unified codebase streamlines the infrastructure, making it more scalable, efficient, higher performing, less complex and easier to support – the very qualities that respondents in the survey are looking for.”

Crump and VergeIO CEO Yan Ness will discuss the results of the report in an upcoming webinar, “The State of the VMware Customer” which analyzes the results of the survey and shows how VergeOS overcomes them. Registrants will receive a copy of the survey in advance of the webinar. Register here: https://www.verge.io/webinar-navigating-virtualization-insights-from-the-state-of-the-vmware-customer-surveywebinar/

About VergeOS:

VergeIO is the Ultraconverged Infrastructure (UCI) company. Unlike hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), it rotates the traditional IT stack (compute, storage, and networking) into an integrated data center operating system, VergeOS. Its efficiency enables greater workload density on the same hardware with high levels of data resiliency. The result is dramatically lower costs and greatly simplified IT.

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