Only 5% of enterprises say they are fully prepared to execute major changes to their virtualization environment, even as more than two-thirds expect to make “material” shifts to their virtualization strategy within the next two years, according to a new Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) survey that points to rising pressure from artificial intelligence workloads, cloud spending volatility and performance demands.
The survey, which polled nearly 400 global IT decision-makers between Dec. 15, 2025 and Jan. 4, 2026, portrays a market at an inflection point as companies reassess long-standing assumptions about where workloads should run and how to operate hybrid estates at scale.
HPE said budget constraints were the top barrier slowing progress, cited by 28% of respondents, followed by technical complexity (24%), migration risk (21%) and skills gaps (20%).
While licensing disruption has been a catalyst for many organizations to revisit virtualization roadmaps, HPE’s data suggests the driver is broader than price alone.
Just 4% of respondents cited licensing costs as the single biggest factor behind their virtualization decisions, according to the company, with many firms instead prioritizing a shift toward hybrid operating models and “AI readiness.”
The reassessment comes as parts of the industry grapple with fallout from VMware’s post-acquisition commercial changes, which have prompted some customers to explore alternatives and, in at least one high-profile case, litigation over access and contract terms.
HPE said enterprises are taking a phased approach rather than attempting wholesale migrations, with 57% indicating staged modernization efforts.
It added that hybrid cloud is emerging as a preferred path to meet AI-related performance requirements, noting that respondents reported provisioning across multiple environments, including public cloud, virtualized clusters, private cloud and edge deployments.
Respondents also ranked operational capabilities as increasingly central to virtualization strategy. When shaping future virtualized and private cloud plans, enterprises said unified backup and cyber recovery (70%), cross-platform governance (61%), and integrated observability and AIOps (55%) were “very important” or “business critical,” HPE said.
“We’re seeing enterprise leaders reassess longstanding IT assumptions to balance cost predictability, AI readiness and performance,” Brian Gruttadauria, HPE’s CTO of Hybrid Cloud, said in the release, adding that the shift was less about “rip and replace” and more about simplifying operations to close the gap between AI ambitions and day-to-day execution.
Business News Asia