The Coming Private Cloud Reset
DCIG, Wednesday, February 18th, 2026
The days of building a customized private cloud based upon VMware's features have ended. Broadcom's decision to stop licensing vSphere as a standalone solution makes that apparent. This change in software licensing will force organizations to do more than identify viable VMware alternatives.
Instead, they must consider how they will implement a private cloud going forward. This requires that they identify providers that offer the private cloud functionality they seek. To do so, they must first define the features they want a private cloud to possess.
VMware: The De facto Private Cloud
Until now, few organizations had to examine in advance what features they wanted their private cloud to possess. While this statement represents generalization, they could simply select and deploy VMware enterprise wide. They then picked from VMware's and its partners' feature menu and implemented the private cloud they wanted.