The Acquisition of VMware by Broadcom
Over the past few years, the virtualization landscape has undergone significant change. VMware, long regarded as the de facto standard and a giant in the virtualization industry—with flagship products such as vSphere, vSAN, and NSX powering modern data centers—has begun to face serious challenges.
Since its major acquisition by Broadcom Inc. in November 2023, changes in market dynamics have become inevitable. A growing number of organizations are now reconsidering their virtualization strategies, exploring alternative solutions, and more recently, embracing what is known as the “VMware Exit”—a movement in which companies leave the VMware ecosystem in search of more efficient and flexible alternatives.
The USD 69 billion acquisition marked one of the largest deals in the history of the technology industry. Broadcom’s intention was to expand its portfolio into infrastructure software. However, along the way, Broadcom introduced a series of fundamental changes. The perpetual licensing model (one-time purchase with lifetime usage) was replaced with an annual subscription model. Several VMware products were also discontinued or consolidated into a single large bundle known as VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).
One name that has increasingly emerged as a strong alternative to VMware is Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE). This raises an important question: in 2025, which is more efficient—Proxmox or VMware?
A Brief Overview of VMware
VMware is widely recognized as a mature and stable enterprise-grade virtualization solution. Many large organizations rely on VMware to run their mission-critical workloads.
VMware Strengths:
A broad and mature ecosystem
Comprehensive enterprise features
Globally adopted by large enterprises
Current Challenges with VMware:
Rising licensing costs
Less flexible subscription-based licensing model
Increasing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Overall, VMware remains a proven and reliable virtualization platform for enterprise needs. However, with increasing licensing costs and higher TCO, many organizations are reevaluating whether VMware is still the most efficient choice for their long-term IT strategy—especially amid growing demands for efficiency and flexibility in the years ahead.
Get to Know Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE is an open-source virtualization platform that combines KVM (virtual machines) and LXC (containers) into a single, integrated interface.
Proxmox Advantages:
Open-source and transparent
Significantly lower licensing costs
Supports HA, clustering, backup, and snapshots
Simple, web-based management interface
Proxmox Challenges:
Requires IT team readiness, especially for teams accustomed to the VMware ecosystem
Smaller third-party ecosystem compared to VMware
Enterprise implementations are best supported by experienced partners to minimize operational risks
Conclusion
Overall, Proxmox offers a more open and cost-efficient approach to virtualization, particularly for organizations looking to optimize costs without sacrificing stability and core features. With the right support and careful planning, Proxmox challenges can be effectively managed—making it an increasingly relevant VMware alternative in 2026.
Proxmox vs VMware Comparison
1. Cost & Efficiency
VMware typically applies a paid licensing model with complex subscription schemes, particularly for enterprise services. Costs can escalate as organizations add CPU cores, hosts, or additional features.
Proxmox, on the other hand, adopts an open-source approach where the core platform can be used without licensing fees. Costs are primarily focused on optional support subscriptions, which are flexible and can be tailored to the organization’s support requirements.
From a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) perspective, Proxmox enables organizations to:
Significantly reduce IT operational costs
Reallocate budgets to areas such as security, backup, or application development
Avoid cost spikes caused by changes in licensing policies
2. Flexibility & Control
VMware is known for its stability and maturity, but it is highly vendor-centric. Many advanced features, integrations, and developments are tightly coupled with the VMware ecosystem, which can limit flexibility in infrastructure management and evolution.
As an open-source solution, Proxmox provides full control over the entire virtualization stack. Organizations can:
Design infrastructure architectures based on business needs
Integrate with various open-source and third-party tools
Avoid vendor lock-in
This approach is particularly relevant for organizations seeking long-term technological independence and high flexibility.
3. Enterprise Features
Both VMware and Proxmox provide essential enterprise-grade features required for business operations, including:
High Availability (HA)
Live Migration
Backup and Snapshots
The key difference lies in how these features are managed. VMware offers comprehensive functionality, but features are often distributed across multiple modules or editions.
Proxmox simplifies enterprise feature management by integrating them into a single platform. Administrators can manage virtual machines, containers, storage, HA, and backups directly from one web-based dashboard—without the need for numerous additional components.
4. Ease of Migration from VMware to Proxmox (Complete Guide)
Migration from VMware to a new platform is often perceived as complex and risky. Common concerns include downtime, data loss, and disruptions to mission-critical applications. As a result, migration capability is a crucial factor when evaluating VMware alternatives.
Proxmox adopts a more open and flexible approach, enabling migration to be planned, phased, and executed with minimal risk. In general, the VMware-to-Proxmox migration process includes the following stages:
a. Infrastruktur Assessment
The first step is mapping the existing VMware environment, including the number of VMs, resource specifications, application dependencies, and availability requirements. This phase is critical for defining the most suitable migration strategy.
b. Migration Planning
Organizations can choose a phased migration approach, where non-critical workloads are migrated first, followed by production workloads. This strategy helps minimize operational risks.
c. VM Conversion and Import
Proxmox supports virtual machine conversion from VMware, allowing VMs to be migrated without rebuilding them from scratch. With proper configuration, downtime can be kept to a minimum.
d. Testing dan Optimization
After migration, each workload is tested to ensure performance, stability, and integration before being fully deployed in the production environment.
With this approach, migrating from VMware to Proxmox is not only feasible but also a strategic step toward long-term efficiency.
Why Proxmox Is Becoming Increasingly Relevant in 2026
As organizations enter 2025, many are reassessing their IT infrastructure strategies. In this context, Proxmox is increasingly viewed as a relevant and adaptive virtualization solution, driven by several key factors:
Pressure to improve IT cost efficiency without compromising service quality
Continued growth of open-source adoption in enterprise environments, now forming the foundation of many critical systems
Maturity of the Proxmox community and support ecosystem, increasing confidence for production workloads
The need for full control over data and infrastructure, with no vendor dependency
In Indonesia, this trend is gaining momentum as more mid-sized and enterprise organizations seek virtualization solutions that are cost-effective, technically flexible, and sustainable for the long term.
Proxmox as a VMware Alternative at CBNCloud
For organizations currently using VMware, migrating to Proxmox does not necessarily mean changing providers. CBNCloud offers Proxmox as a VMware alternative, complete with:
Production-ready cloud infrastructure
Experienced engineering teams
Managed migration services
Local support and enterprise-grade SLAs
With CBNCloud, organizations can transition to Proxmox securely, efficiently, and with minimal risk.
Conclusion
In 2025, Proxmox stands out as a highly viable alternative to VMware—especially for organizations looking to reduce costs without sacrificing performance and stability.
The best choice is not only about the platform, but also about choosing the right partner. With CBNCloud’s support, migrating from VMware to Proxmox can become a strategic move toward long-term efficiency.
Want to know if Proxmox is the right fit for your infrastructure?
Consult your needs with the CBNCloud team and get a Proxmox migration assessment today.