Choosing Infrastructure for the Next Decade

August 4, 2026

Virtualization, Cloud, and the Coming AI Buildout

The deadline for deciding about VMware is now a fixed point on the calendar. On October 11, 2027, general support for vSphere 8 ends. It is the last VMware release that can be licensed perpetually. Technical guidance continues into 2029, but the practical decision arrives sooner. Every organization running VMware must answer a direct question: Do we commit fully to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), deploy the less feature-rich VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) bundle, or move on?

The VMware deadline is the entry point to this discussion, not the whole story. The platform an organization settles on now is the one most likely to carry its cloud-native modernization and AI workloads for the next decade. So, the VMware-specific question really reveals a convergence decision, and it’s as much a choice about an operating model as about technology.

There is no universal right answer. The goal is to have a platform and an operating model matched to an organization’s workloads, its readiness, and its AI ambition. And every organization is different, with different priorities and technical decision drivers.

This research brief examines the looming decision that many organizations will face and the convergence of factors that will require IT organizations to approach infrastructure modernization differently. It also provides a checklist for CIOs and IT leaders to help guide modernization strategies. Finally, it looks at the competitive landscape and discusses where solution providers such as VMware, Nutanix, and Red Hat stand, considering their strengths and how their offerings align with specific customer needs.

Click the image below to download the research brief:

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Summary
The End-of-Support Date Forces the Decision
The Bigger Decision: Infrastructure Convergence and Operating Models
The AI Buildout: From GPU Clusters to Agentic Systems
Four Paths Forward, and Why Coexistence is Structural
What the Right Infrastructure Platforms Have in Common
Why Nutanix Maps to This Framework
A CIO Decision Checklist
Call to Action

COMPANIES CITED
Broadcom
Dell
Everpure
Goldman Sachs
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)
McKinsey & Company
Microsoft
Moor Insights & Strategy
NetApp
Nutanix
Red Hat
VMware

Matt Kimball

VP & Principal Analyst | + posts

Matt Kimball is a Moor Insights & Strategy senior datacenter analyst covering servers and storage. Matt’s 25 plus years of real-world experience in high tech spans from hardware to software as a product manager, product marketer, engineer and enterprise IT practitioner. This experience has led to a firm conviction that the success of an offering lies, of course, in a profitable, unique and targeted offering, but most importantly in the ability to position and communicate it effectively to the target audience.

Patrick Moorhead

Founder, CEO and Chief Analyst | + posts

Patrick Moorhead is the founder, CEO, and chief analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy. His big-picture view of technology is grounded in more than 20 years as an executive leading strategy, product management, product marketing, and corporate marketing functions at NCR, AT&T, Compaq, and AMD. He has shared his expertise in areas from silicon to infrastructure to enterprise SaaS and everything in-between in thousands of national broadcast appearances (CNBC, Yahoo Finance), articles (Forbes, CIO), research-based analyses, and podcast episodes. Today, he has 100+ CXO-level advisory clients and is often ranked the #1 technology industry analyst by ARInsights.