Unlocking True Choice: How to Rationalise Virtualisation Costs Without Risking Continuity

The virtualisation landscape has experienced a significant shift. Certain license changes have introduced substantial uncertainty, leaving enterprise platform teams to grapple with unpredictable licensing trajectories and vendor lock-in. A staggering 99% of surveyed IT leaders express concern over the impact of this acquisition¹, and 32% are actively considering alternatives.²

The core challenge isn’t merely about finding an alternative hypervisor, it is about preserving operational continuity while establishing control over infrastructure complexity and spiralling costs.

The Cost of the Status Quo

For years, certain vendors served as the default enterprise standard. However, shifting market dynamics have turned virtualisation into a disproportionate budget burden. Enterprise IT teams require a strategy that allows them to modernise their infrastructure at their own pace, rather than forced migration timelines dictated by a vendor.

To break free from vendor lock-in, organisations need a unified approach that bridges existing environments with next-generation open infrastructure.

Replatforming on Your Terms: HPE Morpheus VM Essentials

XMA provides a clear path forward through HPE Morpheus VM Essentials Software. This unified platform enables organisations to manage existing deployments alongside a modern, embedded hypervisor, allowing you to replatform workloads at your own pace. This software introduces an enterprise-grade, KVM-based stack designed to deliver a cloud operating model directly to your private infrastructure.

This architecture delivers a balanced transition path through specific core capabilities:

Unified Management Ecosystem: Provision and manage both the embedded HPE Virtual Machine (HVM) hypervisor and existing platforms from a single interface.

Enterprise-Grade Cluster Resilience: The KVM-based HVM hypervisor is hardened to include high availability, live migration, distributed workload placement, and native data protection.

De-risked Migration Pathways: Built-in bulk migration features allow platform teams to systematically transition virtual machines from your existing environments to HVM clusters when ready.

Extensive Partner Integration: The platform fits cleanly into existing environments, leveraging a pluggable abstraction framework to integrate with backup providers like Cohesity, Commvault, and Veeam.

Advanced Networking Security: Integration with the HPE Aruba Networking CX 10000 plugin provides hypervisor-agnostic microsegmentation and distributed firewall capabilities across ESXi and HVM environments.

Quantifiable Efficiency Gains

Transitioning to this agile infrastructure model yields measurable improvements across the enterprise:

Metric	Business Benefit
Workload Cost Reduction	Up to 90% savings for migrated workloads.³
Total Cost of Ownership	Up to 48% lower TCO over 5 years compared to legacy software-based solutions.⁴
Infrastructure Consolidation	Achieve a 7:1 consolidation ratio, reducing annual power costs by up to 65%.⁵

A Stable Foundation with Global Backing

Migrating core enterprise workloads requires absolute confidence in the underlying technology. By combining HPE Morpheus VM Essentials with HPE ProLiant servers and HPE Alletra Storage MP, XMA delivers a future-ready foundation for enterprise IT. This solution combines the flexibility of an open architecture with secure hardware enclaves, predictive AI operations, and global support.

Organisations no longer have to accept escalating virtualisation premiums. Partnering with XMA gives you the expertise and the exact HPE software tools required to streamline your hybrid cloud modernisation, control your budget, and retain total choice over where your workloads run. Contact your XMA Account Manager today or talk to us at enquiries@xma.co.uk to discuss your options with our experts

“High Levels of Customer Unease Around VMware-Broadcom Deal:
Report,” Redmond Channel Partner, June 2024.
“VMware Under Broadcom: Challenges, customer impacts and choices,” ITAA, June 2024.
Based on internal analysis of the cost of HPE Morpheus VM Essentials licensing versus available market data on cost of existing virtualization licensing (VMware vSphere® Foundation). Savings do not include discounts and subject to change without notice.
Based on internal analysis of the cost of a 10-rack configuration using HPE Aruba Networking CX 10000 versus available market data on cost of existing software-based networking features (VMware NSX®) over a 5 year period; and scaling of HPE Aruba Networking CX 10000 with ~800G Firewall compared to ~ 80G Firewall from a leading vendor.
SPEC and the names SPECrate are registered trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). The stated results [SPECrate2017_int_base: #20893] are published as of 01-01-2025, see spec.org, and compared against a 48-core estimated Gen12 system. All rights reserved.