VMware Uncertainty Pushes Enterprises From Static Infrastructure To Ongoing Workload Evaluation

For years, virtualization sat in the background, doing exactly what IT leaders asked of it. It ran quietly, reliably, and without demanding attention, until upheaval in the VMware ecosystem brought it back into focus. Not because the technology failed, but because vendor business model shifts turned an untouched layer of infrastructure into an unexpected source of risk, forcing organizations to revisit decisions they haven’t questioned in years.

But for many organizations, the disruption also opens the door to a new operational discipline. Jeff Adams, Country Leader for Hybrid Multicloud at Nutanix, frames this moment not as a scramble to replace platforms, but as a chance to rethink how and where workloads run. Drawing on years leading cloud sales and strategy across VMware, Amazon Web Services, and Okta, Adams points to a more deliberate, repeatable approach to infrastructure decisions that treats workload placement as an ongoing business choice rather than a one-time technical call.

For over a decade, VMware’s commanding market share, which exceeded 80% of on-premises data centers, made it the definition of "set it and forget it" infrastructure. But recent acquisition-driven changes to its pricing, packaging, and partner ecosystem have created widespread uncertainty. "What this moment really creates is the opportunity to evaluate intelligent workload placement. Where is the best place to run this workload, and what is the matrix that goes into that decision for your organization?" says Adams.

• Time to reevaluate: The ripple effects are already visible, as major hardware vendors like Dell move away from tightly integrated solutions and key cloud providers such as IBM alter their VMware offerings. According to Adams, the new reality requires a pivot. "This has been a very stable operating environment for customers," he says. "Now that legacy technology that had been stable has become the unstable one, and organizations need to put real due diligence back into that risk profile."

Adams points to intelligent workload placement as the solution. The framework begins with detailed financial factors, including vendor-specific licensing realities for Microsoft or Oracle workloads and the bottom-line impact of new subscription models. "Then there are other things that go into intelligent workload placement too, like latency and data sovereignty, where you’re actually processing the data, and egress charges," he says, emphasizing that workload placement has moved beyond a technical choice inside one ecosystem into a recurring, multi-vendor business discipline.

• Reality check: But before modernizing anything, organizations have to be honest about whether the change delivers real business value. "It really comes down to being clear on the value of replacing an application during this kind of reevaluation, not just reacting to frustration with a vendor," Adams says. "There are plenty of vendors customers don’t enjoy dealing with, but they still work with them every day because the software does its job."

The moment of re-evaluation extends far beyond a single vendor. Adams describes it as an event that opens a "modernization aperture," prompting a fresh look at long-ignored legacy systems. That push to modernize converges with the business incentive to fuel AI and machine learning platforms with the valuable institutional data trapped in those systems.

• Data has gravity: The opportunity is to unlock value by moving long-dormant data next to modern analytics platforms, building a more resilient hybrid ecosystem that both mitigates risk and fuels innovation. "We’re asking our customers to pick up the boat anchor and start to move the data. Put all of that legacy data, all of this intellectual and institutional knowledge, right next to where you're doing your data analytics or your inference training or what have you," he explains.

The goal, then, isn’t finding a single replacement platform or locking in a new long-term bet. It’s building a repeatable decision framework that treats workload placement as a living practice, not a one-time project. In an environment shaped by shifting costs, licensing models, regulatory constraints, and business priorities, resilience comes from the ability to reassess, rebalance, and adapt as conditions change. That discipline, not platform loyalty, is what allows infrastructure strategy to keep pace with the business.

"It shouldn’t be a static, set-it-and-forget-it decision," Adams concludes. "It should be an ever-evolving strategy that gets reevaluated every quarter or every six months, based on cost, licensing, and the realities of the environment you’re operating in."

The views and opinions expressed are those of Jeff Adams and do not represent the official policy or position of any organization.