Are you still working with VMware? Since its acquisition by Broadcom and the dramatic price increases that followed, many organizations have been searching for an alternative. Others are still taking their first steps toward virtualization. In either case, the challenge is the same: make a choice that’s both affordable and future-proof, regardless of whether that solution offers more virtualization or (spoiler alert!) containerization.

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has certainly had an impact. The company decided to stop selling traditional VMware licenses, instead offering a subscription model at a much higher price — in practice, up to 10 or even 12 times more expensive. Since then, many companies have been looking for an alternative virtualization solution. But how do you find the right one?

Don’t panic!

“That’s what many companies have been doing recently,” says Angelo Jacobs, business development manager at Piros. “If they couldn’t quickly renew their licenses at the old prices, they would start looking for a replacement for VMware, without always fully considering what the alternative offered, as long as it cost less.”

But this approach can backfire. “Every virtualization solution is different,” continues Dennis Grigaliunas, sales engineer at Piros. “So, you can never simply replace VMware with new software one-on-one. It’s not exactly a simple exercise. If you choose different virtualization software, you must free up the necessary resources and attract the right expertise, so your team is ready and able to work with the new solution in the right way.”

Is your virtualization software future-proof?

“Vendors are increasingly delivering their software and technology in container form,” notes Jacobs. Suppose you don’t take this into account when choosing virtualization software. In that case, you’ll end up in the same situation as with VMware’s price increases: suddenly forced to implement a container platform far too quickly, without the necessary dedicated resources.”

“At the same time, the reality is that many companies aren’t running everything in containers yet, but are working with virtual machines,” Grigaliunas continues. “You can’t just abandon them. You might never even containerize some large, monolithic applications. That doesn’t have to be a problem. There’s a solution that allows you to virtualize without containerizing, and it still allows for containerization afterward. Applications then continue to run on VMs outside the container environment until they reach end-of-life, after which you recode them and place them in a container.”

Virtualization and/or containerization: how does that work?

An approach that leaves all possibilities open to you is Red Hat’s. The company recently launched OpenShift Virtualization Engine: a stripped-down version of OpenShift focused specifically on virtualization. This standalone version provides a simple tool for spinning up all your virtual machines. If you already have OpenShift, you can choose the Virtualization Engine feature. Even then, you can virtualize without containerizing, but you’ll already have the container platform, ensuring that you’re future-ready. Both technologies are tightly integrated and usable at the edge and on-premises, in the private cloud, and with all hyperscalers in the public cloud.

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