News

As VMware Migrations Accelerate Post-Broadcom, AWS Launches Elastic VMware Service

• By David Ramel
• 08/06/2025

Since Broadcom finalized its $69 billion acquisition of VMware in late 2023, enterprise IT circles have been increasingly shaken by licensing overhauls, support concerns, and product alignment shifts. Broadcom has consolidated SKUs, imposed subscription-based pricing, and sunset perpetual licenses, prompting anxiety among VMware's loyal base. Many enterprises now face rising costs and uncertainty about long-term platform strategy, sparking a new wave of VMware workload migrations.

Customers, wary of being locked into inflexible licensing and potential vendor lock-in, are weighing alternatives like public cloud infrastructure and competing hypervisors. However, migrating away from VMware has traditionally meant application refactoring, re-platforming, or retraining teams--introducing high friction and risk.

AWS Launches Amazon Elastic VMware Service
AWS just launched the new Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS), a fully managed offering that allows customers to run VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) directly inside their Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

According to AWS, EVS allows for:

• Full VCF stack deployment in just hours, via a guided AWS Console workflow
• Running VMware workloads on bare metal EC2 i4i.metal instances
• Seamless integration with native AWS services like Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP>
• License portability of existing VCF licenses
• Zero need for re-platforming, IP reassignments, or retooling
• Optional use of AWS partners for deployment and management assistance

AWS claims EVS is the fastest and easiest path to run VMware workloads in the cloud without disruption, using familiar VMware tools and keeping operational runbooks unchanged.

The new service is available in six global AWS regions, including N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Frankfurt, Dublin, and Tokyo.

NetApp Fast-Tracks VMware Migration Enablement
In tandem with the AWS EVS launch, NetApp is emphasizing its role as a storage integration partner, particularly through Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP, which is fully supported in EVS environments.

AWS documentation and blogs underscore FSx for NetApp ONTAP as a primary external NFS or iSCSI storage option for EVS deployments. This integration enables:

• Shared block storage or NFS datastore capabilities for VMware VMs
• Simplified hybrid and multicloud storage scenarios
• Lower-latency access and scalability compared to traditional on-prem SANs

NetApp's swift alignment with EVS highlights the opportunity for storage vendors to support enterprises looking to modernize while retaining VMware at the core of their virtualization strategy.

Conclusion: Escape Hatch or Onramp?
While many enterprises view the Broadcom-VMware fallout as a push to abandon VMware, AWS is positioning EVS as a bridge--not an escape--from VMware to the cloud. With license portability and full VMware compatibility, Amazon EVS reduces migration barriers for VMware shops wary of starting from scratch.

For organizations unsettled by Broadcom's strategy, but still invested in VMware's ecosystem, Amazon EVS--with support from partners like NetApp--offers a safe, scalable, cloud-native runway.