The Path to Long-Term Strategy and Building a Future Proof Virtualization

With VMware’s acquisition by Broadcom, IT leaders find themselves facing critical choices regarding their virtualization strategies. While tactical planning focuses on immediate solutions, a long-term approach requires evaluating the future of workloads, platform flexibility and modernization opportunities.

Successful organizations will capitalize on the evolving virtualization landscape to build a resilient, adaptable IT environment that remains competitive, scalable and cost-efficient over the next five to ten years.

By now, your organization has probably already discussed where you stand and what your virtualization play is for the immediate future. These discussions are crucial — whether you’re considering a renewal, exploring new platforms or modernizing your infrastructure — and will help you to understand the key long-term opportunities in virtualization.

Many organizations are adopting a multi-hypervisor strategy to balance cost, risk and performance. This hybrid approach allows IT teams to integrate VMware with other platforms like Nutanix, Hyper-V, Red Hat OpenStack and OpenShift Virtualization.

Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) further supports the hybrid vision, integrating VMware across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, enabling businesses to continue to leverage the strengths of the hybrid cloud. However, organizations considering this approach must weigh the costs and lock-in factors associated with VMware.

Containerization has become an efficient way to manage workloads. By leveraging Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift and other container solutions, organizations can enhance workload portability, accelerate deployment and reduce reliance on traditional VMs.

The key benefits of a container-first strategy include:

• Workload agility: Seamless movement between the cloud and on-premises environments.
• Faster deployment: Increased efficiency in application development.
• Resilience and security: Modernized applications that align with DevSecOps practices.

For organizations with existing virtualized workloads, a hybrid virtualization model — blending VMs and containers together — may provide the best of both worlds.

Traditional disaster recover (DR) models are evolving. Organizations that shift towards automation and infrastructure-as-code(IaC) can codify applications rather than relying on traditional backups. This transformation enables:

• Faster recovery times: Automated redeployment vs. restoring from backups
• Lower storage costs: Reduced need for extensive VM image retention.
• Improved resilience: Infrastructure that can quickly scale and adapt.

As organizations transition toward multi-cloud and hybrid environments, the need for platform engineering is more important than ever. This discipline focuses on creating standardized, automated infrastructure platforms that support both virtualization and containerization.

The key focus areas include:

• Automation and orchestration: Simplifying IT operations with IaC.
• Security and compliance: Unifying security policies across all cloud and on-prem environments.
• Scalability and cost optimization: Ensuring long-term sustainability with efficient workload distribution.

One major barrier to shifting virtualization strategies is resistance from IT teams with entrenched VMware expertise. Decision-makers must lead this transition with clear training initiatives, leadership mandates and incentives to embrace modernization.

The next decade of IT infrastructure will be defined by hybrid cloud strategies, automation and workload modernization. Organizations that proactively embrace these shifts will reduce costs, increase flexibility and stay competitive.

At CDW, we can help your business to navigate these long-term changes with strategic consulting, workload assessments and our platform engineering expertise.