Nearly three-quarters of IT decision makers prioritize minimizing costs in their future virtualization strategies, according to a new survey examining how companies are responding to upheaval in the virtualization market. The study, conducted by Unisphere Research in partnership with Rimini Street and published in June 2026, surveyed 269 executives, managers, and professionals across VMware user organizations. The report finds that corporate virtualization environments are undergoing fundamental change as companies pivot away from VMware and explore cloud services, multiple hypervisors, and containerization.
Cost concerns are pushing IT leaders toward hybrid and multi-cloud architectures, with 73% of final decision makers placing "minimizing costs" at the top of their virtualization roadmaps. Beyond immediate savings, 64% look to virtualization platforms to enable scalability and more flexible capacity. Operational efficiency drives 65% of top IT decision makers toward multiple hypervisor environments, while 53% aim to reduce costs for cloud-native applications. At least 47% prefer a blended approach to workload placement, and an identical share are adopting a mixed strategy that combines the agility and speed of containers with the robust security, networking, and management tools of existing virtualization platforms. The share of organizations planning to move most of their applications and assets to containers is expected to nearly double from 10% to 18% within three years.
Artificial intelligence is emerging as a central tool for managing virtualization complexity, though adoption remains uneven. The report shows that 61% see AIOps—the process of achieving IT results through AI tools—as useful for supporting AI initiatives, while 47% see it supporting predictive analytics and proactive maintenance. Another 40% intend to employ AI to enhance security and compliance. Currently, only 22% are looking to autonomous AI agents to support their virtualization strategies. According to the report, AIOps automates the heavy lifting of virtualization management, allowing overstretched IT teams to manage increasingly complex environments without growing headcount.
Despite virtualization's promise to simplify IT environments, operational complexity remains the most cited challenge at 40%. Other leading obstacles include managing multi-vendor ecosystems at 38%, securing an expanded attack surface at 37%, and addressing skills gaps at 37%. The survey suggests that modernization efforts aim to create environments that are automated, secure by design, and transparent, with a shift toward self-healing infrastructure that reduces the burden on IT staff. However, IT virtualization decision makers recognize that shifting or adding a new platform is more challenging than anticipated. The convergence of cost pressure, AI adoption, and vendor migration is reshaping how enterprises think about infrastructure, forcing technology leaders to balance immediate financial relief against long-term architectural flexibility.