01What changed under Broadcom
Broadcom completed its $61B acquisition of VMware in November 2023 and moved fast.
Perpetual licences were retired, roughly 200 products were collapsed into a handful of subscription bundles anchored on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), and the partner ecosystem was cut back sharply. Each change on its own was manageable. Together, they changed the economics of staying.
Acquisition completes
Broadcom closes its $61B acquisition of VMware and signals a shift to subscription-only licensing across the portfolio.
Perpetual licences retired
End of availability for perpetual licences and pay-as-you-go. Around 200 products consolidated into a few bundles; VCF becomes the primary route to most of the ecosystem (vSphere, vSAN, NSX).
AT&T v. Broadcom
AT&T sues over support contract changes, alleging a proposed ~1,050% support-cost increase, and states in filings that it plans to migrate its ~75,000 VMs off VMware. The suit settles confidentially.
Regulators take notice
The European Cloud Competition Observatory rates Broadcom “Red: Critical” in three consecutive reports; CISPE members report price rises of 800 to 1,500% to the European Commission.
Partner programme closed
Broadcom shuts the VMware Cloud Service Provider programme in favour of an invite-only model, reportedly leaving just 19 authorised VMware cloud providers in the US. CISPE files an EU complaint in March 2026.
vSphere 8 end of general support
The last perpetually licensed release runs out of road. Every VMware customer must choose: subscribe to 9.x, take third-party support, or migrate.
Decision deadline375 days away
02The commercial impact
The headline figures below are reported and alleged by parties in dispute with Broadcom. They are not audited price data.
But the submissions and court filings themselves are a matter of public record, and they are consistent with what customers describe at renewal.
CISPE members: 800 to 1,500%, reported to the European CommissionAT&T: ~1,050%, alleged in court filings
AT&T's estimated migration cost
For ~75,000 VMs, and it stated in court filings that it plans to migrate anyway. When exit costs that much and is still preferable, the renewal price speaks for itself.
Authorised US cloud providers left
Reportedly remaining after the VCSP partner programme closed in January 2026, down from thousands. Hosting customers are being displaced along with their providers.
“Red: Critical” ratings
ECCO rated Broadcom's conduct Red in three consecutive 2025 reports, warning that its licensing terms breach EU competition law. An advocacy body's view, but a formal, public one.
Subscription, like it or not
Hardest hit: cloud providers, perpetual-licence support renewals, and anyone using a fraction of the VCF bundle but paying for all of it.
CISPE is in active dispute with Broadcom, and AT&T's ~1,050% was a proposed quote it refused, not a price it paid. Treat them as reported allegations: formally filed, publicly documented and unrebutted in kind.
03Why Nutanix is winning the exits
Plenty of platforms benefit from VMware's troubles, but analysts consistently position Nutanix as the most direct enterprise replacement, and its results are the clearest evidence of where the workloads are going.
Analyst validation
A Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure for the second consecutive year, and described by analysts as the most direct challenger to VMware on feature parity.
Complete platform
Built-in AHV hypervisor, hyperconverged storage and hybrid cloud management in one stack: a like-for-like VCF replacement with no separate hypervisor licence to pay.
A real off-ramp
Nutanix Move, included at no extra cost, migrates VMs from ESXi, Hyper-V, AWS and Azure to AHV with VM data unmodified and intact. Migration friction is what keeps customers in place, and Move reduces it.
You would not be first
700+ new customers in a single quarter, most migrating from VMware, and a financially solid, SEC-listed vendor you can plan a decade of infrastructure around.
Your three options at renewal
Every VMware customer faces the same fork before October 2027. We help you weigh it honestly.
- Renew with BroadcomZero migration risk, but you accept the new bundle economics. Worth it for deep NSX and VCF estates; negotiate hard either way.
- Third-party supportBuys time on vSphere 8 past the support deadline: a bridge, not a destination. No new features, and the decision still waits at the end.
- Migrate on your own timetableStart planning now and move before the renewal forces your hand: the option every figure on this page argues for evaluating seriously.
The land grab, quantified
Stated by Nutanix's CEO, April to May 2026: company framing, not independent market sizing.
Nutanix is deliberately not chasing all of them. It has segmented out roughly half (the smallest accounts and the hyperscale-bound) and is targeting the enterprise middle market.
04The alternatives clients also weigh
Nutanix is not the only exit. The comparison below is the conversation we have with clients, including the option of staying put.
Nutanix AHV / NCI
Best for: a like-for-like enterprise replacement
- Gartner Leader; the most direct VMware challenger on feature parity
- Free first-party migration tooling (Move) from ESXi, Hyper-V, AWS and Azure
- One platform: hypervisor, storage and hybrid cloud management
- Quote-based pricing: negotiate; not the cheapest on licence cost alone
- Another single-vendor platform: you swap lock-ins rather than escape them
Stay on VMware (VCF 9)
Best for: deep NSX and VCF estates, change-freeze environments
- No migration cost or risk; the deepest feature set and ecosystem maturity
- Broadcom remains a Gartner Leader in the same quadrant
- Reported renewal increases of 800 to 1,500% in formal EU submissions
- Full-bundle licensing whether or not you use every component
- Partner ecosystem reduced to an invite-only shortlist
Hyper-V / Azure Local
Best for: Microsoft-centric estates with an Azure commitment
- Often already licensed through existing Microsoft agreements
- Microsoft is the other major commercial Leader in the same quadrant
- Strongest when the destination is Azure: the strategy comes with it
- Migration tooling and the HCI story are less turnkey than Nutanix Move
Open source (Proxmox, OpenStack, XCP-ng)
Best for: capable in-house teams, cost-driven estates
- By far the lowest licence cost, and no vendor lock-in
- Mature KVM and Xen foundations with active communities
- The only CISPE member to fully exit VMware needed several months and all 400 employees
- Enterprise support, ecosystem integrations and tooling are on you
Public cloud
Best for: workloads already earmarked for cloud
- Removes the on-premises estate, and the hypervisor licence question, entirely
- Pay-as-you-go elasticity for variable workloads
- Rarely the answer for a whole estate in a single step
- Steady-state costs for static workloads often exceed on-premises
Scale Computing
Best for: SMB and edge deployments
- A lightweight, simple hyperconverged platform
- A strong fit for branch and edge use cases
- Not aimed at large enterprise data centre estates
05Comparison at a glance
The same options side by side. Scroll the table sideways on a small screen.
| Criterion | Nutanix | Stay on VCF 9 | Hyper-V / Azure Local | Proxmox / open source | Public cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing model | Subscription, quote-based | Subscription bundles, per core (16-core minimum per CPU) | Per core, often via an existing Microsoft agreement | Free core plus paid support per socket | Consumption |
| Relative licence cost | ££ | ££££ | ££ | £ | ££ to ££££ (usage) |
| Migration effort from VMware | Low: free first-party Move tooling | None | Moderate | High: DIY tooling and process | High: re-platforming |
| Enterprise readiness | Gartner Leader, two years running | Gartner Leader | Gartner Leader | Team-dependent | Proven |
| Hypervisor | AHV (included) | ESXi | Hyper-V | KVM / Xen | Abstracted |
| Key risk | New vendor lock-in; retraining | Renewal price shock; bundle waste | Strategy defaults to Azure | Internal effort and support burden | Cost drift; data gravity |
| Watch the date | Move before renewal, not after | vSphere 8 end of support: October 2027 | Microsoft agreement anniversaries | None | Egress and commitment terms |
£ symbols are relative licence-cost indicators only, not quotes. Gartner positions refer to the 2025 Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure, in which Nutanix, Broadcom (VMware) and Microsoft all appear as Leaders.
06What the maths looks like
A worked example using publicly reported US list-price benchmarks, deliberately conservative and clearly labelled.
Real quotes vary enormously with discount, term and bundle; first VMware renewal quotes have reportedly run 2 to 5 times previous spend before negotiation. Treat everything below as arithmetic, not an offer.
Interactive / Licence cost calculator
Size it to your estate
Drag to match your environment. The same list-price arithmetic as above: indicative only, before any discount or negotiation.
= 512 licensable cores
This calculator does simple list-price arithmetic. It excludes hardware refresh, migration services, support tiers, training and discounting, all of which materially change the answer. Use it to frame the conversation, then ask us for a real assessment.
07How Optronix gets you there
Platform decisions are made on spreadsheets; migrations happen in racks.
Optronix works on both sides of that line: options appraisal, cost modelling and migration design on the technical side, and staging, cabling and cutover on the physical side. One team, end to end.
- 01
Discover and audit
Estate surveys, asset registers, and workload and dependency mapping: the technical baseline every good decision starts from.
- 02
Advise and plan
Independent options appraisal and cost modelling, platform selection support, and move-group planning aligned to your renewal dates.
- 03
Stage and build
Hardware staging plus hypervisor and cluster build: Nutanix-ready nodes configured and tested before they ship to site.
- 04
Migrate
VM migration using tooling such as Nutanix Move, alongside the rack, stack and cabling work on the floor.
- 05
Decommission
Controlled run-down and secure decommissioning of legacy hosts once workloads cut over.
- 06
Support
Smart hands, managed field services and ongoing technical support across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and beyond.
Facing a VMware renewal
Bring us the renewal quote and the estate inventory.
We will give you a straight read on whether to negotiate, migrate or wait, and what each path costs.
Sources and important notices
- Nutanix Q3 FY2026 results: SEC Form 8-K exhibit, May 2026 (revenue, customer additions, guidance).
- Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure, September 2025 (via Nutanix press release).
- ECCO and CISPE reports and submissions to the European Commission, 2025 to 2026 (via The Register and Network World).
- AT&T v. Broadcom court filings, NY State Supreme Court, 2024 (via Network World and The Register).
- Broadcom VCSP partner programme notices, January 2026 (via The Register and SDxCentral).
- TechTarget, SDxCentral and Blocks & Files trade coverage, 2024 to 2026; list-price benchmarks via published licensing guides, 2026.
Important notices. Reported price-increase figures (800 to 1,500%; ~1,050%) are allegations made by parties in active dispute or litigation with Broadcom and are not audited pricing data. Pricing figures on this page are indicative list-price arithmetic only, before discounting, and do not constitute a quotation. Nutanix TCO savings of 30 to 60% are a vendor claim that Optronix has not independently verified. Statements attributed to Nutanix's CEO are company representations. All product names, logos and brands are the property of their respective owners: VMware and VMware Cloud Foundation are trademarks of Broadcom Inc.; Nutanix, AHV and Nutanix Move are trademarks of Nutanix, Inc.; Microsoft, Hyper-V and Azure are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation; AWS is a trademark of Amazon.com, Inc.; Proxmox is a trademark of Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH. Use here is for identification and comparison only and implies no affiliation or endorsement.