VMware / Broadcom exit
Sovereign VMware alternative: move to cloud-native, in Europe
Broadcom's takeover drove VMware costs up. Rather than locking yourself into another proprietary platform, Bunker moves you to a sovereign cloud-native platform, hosted in Europe and fully reversible.
Updated on August 5, 2026
Since Broadcom acquired VMware, the end of perpetual licenses, the shift to subscriptions and the bundled suites have pushed many estates' bills upward. The reflex is to re-migrate the virtual machines onto another hypervisor. Often the better move is to modernise on the way out, going cloud-native on a sovereign platform, hosted in Europe, that you can bring back in-house whenever you decide.
The Broadcom shock: why leave VMware now
Broadcom's acquisition of VMware changed the rules for the companies that run it.
- End of perpetual licenses: the model moved to subscription, a cost that comes back every year.
- Bundled suites: several products are sold together, pushing the bill up even when you use only part of it.
- Price increases and uncertainty: many IT teams report jumps at renewal, with little visibility on what comes next.
The status quo has become a bet. Keeping VMware means accepting a cost trajectory that is no longer yours.
Don't re-migrate into another lock-in
Moving your virtual machines to another proprietary hypervisor, or to a US hyperscaler, fixes today's problem and recreates tomorrow's. You get a fresh dependency, another pricing model you don't control, and for the hyperscalers, exposure to the US CLOUD Act.
Leaving VMware is also a chance to modernise. Instead of carrying your VMs across as-is, you gain by going cloud-native: containerised applications, denser, more resilient and portable from one environment to another.
Managed Kubernetes, sovereign, in Europe
Bunker runs managed Kubernetes hosted in Europe. Kubernetes is the open standard for container orchestration. Your workloads become portable and you are no longer tied to a hypervisor or a vendor.
- Density and resilience: more applications on the same infrastructure, with automatic restarts and scaling.
- Standard API: the same Kubernetes API as everywhere else. Your manifests and tools still work if you change host.
- Complete stack: around the cluster, our managed open-source services (PostgreSQL, S3 object storage, monitoring, CI/CD) rebuild what you had on VMware, open-source and in Europe.
The workloads that must stay virtual machines
Not everything containerises overnight. Some applications stay as VMs, during the transition or for good.
Bunker also provides sovereign compute, hosted in Europe, to run those workloads as-is. You migrate gradually. New services go cloud-native, legacy VMs keep running, and you convert them at your own pace. No big-bang, no forced downtime.
Full reversibility: the real moat
What you deploy on Bunker, you can take back. Everything is open-source and reversible.
- Kubernetes, the managed services and the compute run on open-source building blocks, with no proprietary layer holding you.
- You can bring your platform back onto your own servers, or onto another compatible host, without a rewrite.
- Hosted in Europe, GDPR-compliant, outside the reach of the US CLOUD Act.
You leave VMware without entering a new dependency. That is the promise of a cloud you can take back.
Frequently asked questions
Is moving from VMware to Kubernetes a like-for-like migration?
No, and that's on purpose. Kubernetes orchestrates containers, not virtual machines. You modernise the applications instead of transporting the VMs as-is, and we support the switch application by application. Workloads that must stay as VMs run on our sovereign compute in Europe during the transition.
What about my VMs that won't containerise?
They run on our sovereign compute hosted in Europe, as-is. You migrate at the pace that suits you, new services cloud-native and legacy VMs converted gradually.
Is it really reversible?
Yes. Kubernetes is an open standard and our managed services run on open-source building blocks. You can bring your platform back onto your own servers, or move it to another compatible host, without rewriting your code.
Does my data stay in Europe?
Yes. The infrastructure is hosted in Europe, GDPR-compliant, outside the reach of the US CLOUD Act. Unlike a move to a US hyperscaler, your data does not leave European sovereignty.
Next steps
Leave VMware without changing prison
A sovereign cloud-native platform in Europe, reversible, with migration support. Let's talk about your estate.