Nutanix has reported a significant influx of customers abandoning VMware in the wake of Broadcom’s acquisition, with the rival hyperconverged infrastructure provider claiming to have attracted tens of thousands of defectors. At the .NEXT conference in Chicago, Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami stated that approximately 30,000 clients have transitioned from VMware to his company’s platform, attributing the shift to widespread discontent with Broadcom’s management of the virtualization giant.
“I think there’s no doubt that the customer sentiment continues to be negative about Broadcom,” Ramaswami said, according to a report from SDxCentral. Since Broadcom finalized its purchase of VMware in November 2023, many users have actively sought to reduce or eliminate their dependence on VMware technologies, driven by a combination of financial and operational pressures.
The primary catalysts for these migrations include steep price increases, mandatory product bundling, the discontinuation of perpetual licenses, and a reduction in channel partners that has made VMware more difficult to engage with. These changes have rendered VMware’s offerings unaffordable or impractical for a large segment of small- to medium-sized businesses, narrowing the company’s focus toward enterprise-level clients.
Nutanix has not disclosed the exact breakdown of SMB versus enterprise customers among the 30,000 migrations, though adoption appears strongest in the mid-market segment. The company is also pursuing larger accounts, often beginning with partial deployments to ease the transition. Ramaswami noted that some of the VMware defectors in Nutanix’s most recent fiscal quarter contributed to the “strongest quarterly new logo additions in eight years,” with most stemming from typical VMware migrations onto the hyperconverged infrastructure platform.
During the conference, Brandon Shaw, Nutanix’s vice president and head of technology services, highlighted Western Union as a key example of this trend. The financial services firm has been migrating from VMware to Nutanix over the past six months, moving between 900 and 1,200 applications across 3,900 cores. Shaw explained that Western Union is exploring new IT suppliers to enhance its customer focus, despite previously maintaining “decent lines of communication” with Broadcom. He cited “challenges partnering with them” as a factor in the decision to switch.
The reported migrations underscore a broader industry shift as competitors like Nutanix capitalize on VMware’s post-acquisition challenges. While Broadcom’s strategy aims to consolidate VMware’s enterprise appeal, it has inadvertently created opportunities for rivals to attract cost-sensitive and partner-reliant customers. The long-term impact on VMware’s market position remains to be seen, but the current wave of defections suggests significant friction in the virtualization landscape.
