“Sure, it’s very easy to get agitated and think about a dollar amount and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to go run to Nutanix or I’m going to go to run to Proxmox.’ But guess what? Now you only have one-fifth of the features, and now you need to go figure out how you’re going to do the rest of the four-fifths,” says 11:11 Systems CTO Justin Giardina.
VMware partners say price concerns are easing as AI security needs and VMware Cloud Foundation innovation bolster the platform’s appeal compared to the competition.
“Everybody is so focused on the price and they should be,” said Justin Giardina, chief technology officer of VMware Pinnacle partner 11:11 Systems.
“But when you actually take a step back and the smoke cleared a little bit, the ecosystem and the interaction with VMware in the community—whether it’s disaster recovery or backup or integration with server vendors—is so huge,” Giardina said. “The fact is, sometimes, you just simply can’t walk away from that.”
“So even though the pricing went up, you look at the suite of utilities you get with VMware now—think about the recoverability need for AI cyber events now; think about this complex networking that you need to survive in a cyber world; all the stuff with microsegmentation—the fact that you can just buy one thing and you get all of that is huge for customers,” he said.