What now for enterprise virtualization?

Enterprise virtualization is facing another period of great uncertainty. If the uptake of VMware in the early 2000s popularized virtual machines (VMs) and the entrance of Microsoft into the market in the 2010s broadened the competition, today enterprises face a difficult choice between legacy virtualization, platform migration, and packing it all in for the cloud.

Amid these market-wide concerns, company-specific changes have also caused significant upheaval.

One of the most significant factors driving change in the virtualization market today has been Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, which has prompted enterprises to question their entire approach to virtualization and even if the architecture is right for their long-term needs.

After formally acquiring VMware in November 2023, Broadcom implemented a “dramatic simplification” of the virtualization giant’s product portfolio and licensing. The changes affected customers using VMware products such as vSphere on perpetual licensing in particular, with some seeing prices rise as a result.

In May, a report by the European Cloud Competition Organisation (ECCO) found that the changes have raised licensing costs by up to 1,500% for some customers.

Broadly speaking, the changes have affected customers using VMware products such as vSphere on perpetual licensing, and some customers have sought to seek alternative options.

In 2024, Gartner projected that 30% of the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) market served by companies other than VMware would increase to 60% by 2029. Whether they’re looking to stay with VMware or join the growing percentage seeking solutions further afield, customers can lean on firms such as Pure Storage to keep their costs low and ROI high.

Pure Storage delivers a flexible, efficient platform for data management that works with VMware at a native level, as well as alternative platforms through its extensive network of partnerships and connections.

For those looking to move to the cloud, Pure Storage Cloud offers Enterprise data storage capabilities for AWS and Azure, including a fully managed block Storage-as-a-Service built for VMware environments running on Microsoft Azure. The Pure Storage platform also supports Nutanix and OpenStack, ensuring workload mobility, giving organisations the freedom to choose the virtualization platform that best aligns with their strategy while maintaining the same high performance, resilience, and data services.

Some enterprises may choose to go entirely cloud native, consolidating existing cloud migration efforts and shifting workloads to run entirely through containerization. Pure Storage is more than capable of lending a helping hand here, through its Kubernetes data services platform, Portworx.

This is a dedicated product aimed at managing data for Kubernetes containers and VMs, and well-suited to those enterprises that are looking at a strategy to accommodate their current and future workloads and enable the longer-term modernisation of applications and transition from VMs to containers.

In any case, many enterprises that run particularly secure workloads or legacy applications will stick with virtualization, with Grand View Research tracking most demand for the approach in the IT, banking, and financial services sectors.

A trusted partner for VMware by Broadcom

Those enterprises sticking with VMware can look to greatly improve the performance, efficiency, and management of their data, which is passed directly and securely to VMware services.

Pure Storage is able to offer such deep integrations because, for over a decade, it’s held the title of VMware Technology Alliance Partner. This means it’s a highly trusted vendor for getting ROI out of VMware by Broadcom products.

Its services have been validated and certified as part of the VMware Ready program, which ensures that they’re fully prepared for seamless integration with current and upcoming VMware products, even from day one of a new update.

It starts at the top, with Pure Storage’s core offerings such as FlashArray, its all-flash data storage platform for extreme low-latency workloads. Administrators can manage their FlashArray storage directly within vSphere, for streamlined management of data alongside VM workloads.

On a more granular level, Pure Storage can manage the data of individual VMs within VMware. This not only frees up administrator time, with manual configuration eliminated in favour of automated management, but also reduces costs without compromising performance. This is because data can be allocated according to the intensity of a given workload.

In fact, Pure Storage has measured a 42% reduction in the total cost of ownership (TCO) of virtualized environments among its customers.

Firms assessing their finances in the wake of the VMware licensing changes – including those who weren’t directly affected, but are using the circumstances as a reminder to audit the return on their investments – can also benefit from Pure Storage services.

In 2024, Pure Storage introduced its Virtualization Assessment tool within its storage management platform Pure1, aimed at helping enterprise customers assess their VMware license spending.

Using Pure1, enterprises can assess their historic VM performance and costs, as well as optimize VM usage based on stats such as CPU and memory. In cases where improvements can be made, the platform can recommend rightsizing or migration strategies.

The tool also allows customers to project the costs of continuing to run workloads on their existing VMs, versus moving them to an all-flash system.

Its Evergreen//One storage as a service offering greatly simplifies the number of licenses that IT administrators have to track. Through its built-in cost estimator, administrators can view the set precise consumption and cost targets for their workloads, then apply these across their VMware VMs through the Pure1 VM Analytics platform.

Evergreen//One also comes with dependable service level agreements (SLAs), as a guarantee that customers receive an industry-leading level of performance and uptime.

As enterprises look to integrate newer applications and technologies into their stack, they will also benefit from the offering’s capabilities for streamlined infrastructure delivery, consumption-based pricing, and automatic updates that help the newest tools access their data.

For example, Pure Storage is already highlighting how useful the offering is for simplifying data management for AI. Whether enterprises choose to use VMware or other providers for private AI deployments, Pure’s solutions are able to effectively support any type of data requirement. This ranges from the highest-performing applications and AI all the way through to archiving and everything in between. Add to that the centralized dashboards for data management, and firms are further empowered with future-proof solutions for the next chapter of virtualization.

Enterprises looking for the most flexible and open approach to virtualization can turn to Pure Storage for their comprehensive data management needs. To find out more, please visit the website.