Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami this week during the company’s .NEXT 2025 conference pledged to invest more resources into building out the ecosystem needed to enable more VMware customers to migrate to a different platform in the wake of recent changes made to software licensing fees implemented by Broadcom.

Organizations that have either already shifted workloads to Nutanix in the wake of those changes range from smaller companies such as Golding Construction in Australia to Toshiba, which is now in the process of migrating 2,200 virtual machines to Nutanix platforms.

The challenge organizations making that journey is facing is finding IT professionals that have the skills and expertise required to first migrate virtual machines (VMs), and then manage Nutanix platforms. While such a migration can be made in a few months by a small company, it would take a large enterprise several years to fully migrate thousands of VMs, the stacks of software deployed on top of those VMs and, if needed, the data into a different IT environment.

Addressing that issue will require Nutanix to invest more in creating certification programs to expand the pool of IT professionals that have the expertise required.

Additionally, Nutanix will need to expand the size of its IT services provider ecosystem to make additional application migration expertise available.

Nutanix in its most recent second quarter reported revenues of $654.7 million, a 16% year-over-year increase that is helping to fund the investments needed to build out a more expansive ecosystem, noted Ramaswami. Total free cash flow for the quarter was $187.1 million.

There is, of course, no shortage of VMware alternatives, but among those options, Nutanix is the most similar to VMware, noted Ramaswami. The platform is designed to be managed by IT administrators versus requiring the engineering expertise needed to run, for example, virtual machines on top of a Kubernetes cluster, he added.

Of course, there may come a day when artificial intelligence (AI) tools will make it simpler to migrate from one platform to another, but in the meantime the expertise that is available to run an alternative platform is proving to be a significant factor when trying to determine how much time and effort might be needed to fully migrate.

It’s not clear how many VMware customers are actually migrating to a different platform, but almost all are, at the very least, considering their options, which can range from refactoring existing applications to simply deciding that all new applications be deployed on another platform. The challenge is, the cost of migrating platforms can potentially exceed the cost of the increase in licensing fees being levied by Broadcom, which is an issue that Broadcom clearly considered when determining how much to increase its software licensing fees.

Additionally, there is simply a lot of inertia to be overcome, especially when it comes to encouraging VMware administrators to learn new skills.

Regardless of whatever decision is made, more organizations than ever are now more keenly aware of the impact any change to software licensing fees has on not just the total cost of IT but also the funds available to drive new initiatives, versus simply keeping the IT environment as it is up and running.