Jilted AWS reckons VMware is now crusty like a mainframe

Gives both platforms the ‘generative AI will freshen it up and shift it to the cloud’ treatment

In 2017 Amazon Web Services and VMware were best buddies as they launched a combined cloud service. In 2025 AWS is dismissing Virtzilla as a legacy outfit that needs to be re-platformed to the cloud ASAP before it sinks your business.

Relations between the two tech giants frayed after Broadcom changed VMware’s software licenses and partner programs in ways that meant their lovechild - VMware Cloud on AWS – could not be resold by Amazon and lost its elasticity. Not long after that contretemps, AWS started promoting its generic cloud as a fine destination for VMware workloads – even those it already hosted on the service it created alongside Virtzilla.

Now AWS has gone a step further by delivering an AI-powered tool that it claims can quickly and auto-magically shift VMware workloads into a form ready to run on its elastic compute cloud.

The cloud colossus launched a similar product for Java apps, Q Transform, in 2023, and later claimed it saved over 4,500 years of work by using it to migrate more than 30,000 apps. AWS later teased auto-coding for .Net, mainframe, and VMware apps.

On Thursday it delivered for the two latter platforms and claimed the re-named “AWS Transform” tool reduces the time require for some VMware migration chores from weeks to minutes.

“AWS generated migration wave plans for 500 VMs in just 15 minutes and performed networking translations up to 80x faster than traditional methods,” the outfit asserted, adding that “Partners in pilot programs have cut execution times by up to 90 percent.”

Generative AI helps by converting VMware networking configurations and firewall rules into their Amazonian equivalents.

“With rapid changes in VMware licensing and support model, organizations are increasingly exploring alternatives despite the difficulties associated with migrating and modernizing VMware workloads,” states an AWS blog post that includes many references to legacy systems holding users back.

The post is arguably kinder to mainframes even as it extols Transform’s power to re-platform apps built on big iron.

Subscription vortex

If AWS’s claims for its VMware transformer are more than hype, many will welcome the AI assistance.

The Register offers that suggestion because Broadcom stopped selling standalone VMware products and instead offers a limited set of software bundles offered under subscriptions that include support service. When VMware customers exit existing subs, or support contracts sold with perpetual licenses expire, Broadcom very strongly suggests they buy they new bundles and argues that implementing the entire vStack is a shortcut to an efficient private cloud that quickly pays for itself.

VMware users often report that Broadcom’s subscriptions cost at least 300 percent than their last licensing deal, leading some to seek alternatives.

That’s easier said than done, because VMware implementations are complex and migrations may take years. The Register often hears of customers signing up for three-year VMware subscriptions and planning to use that time to move to an alternative platform.

Do you know more? The Register hears Broadcom is making it harder to acquire some of its products, and may be considering changes to its storage strategies. Contact us here in confidence.

But we also hear that three years may not be enough time to make the move, in part because current versions of VMware software will exit support in 2027 and many orgs may need to upgrade before they migrate.

If AWS can truly speed VMware migrations, it will find a market.

And perhaps find revenge, as one of Broadcom’s arguments for buying its bundles is that public cloud is expensive and complex.

Broadcom also points to growing revenue and surging margins for VMware products as evidence its approach works. ®