Midmarket IT did not ask for a new virtualization platform. The incumbent solution was reliable, familiar, and embedded in an ecosystem of certified admins, mature operations tooling, and certified hardware infrastructures. Additionally, it was often delivered by trusted channel partners that provided the guidance that makes enterprise infrastructure consumable for organizations too small to run their own platform team.

The midmarket took the hardest hit because it lost both of its lifelines at once.

Then the virtualization market changed abruptly—on two levels. Perpetual licenses and affordable entry-level SKUs gave way to subscription-only bundles with significant minimum commitments. Omdia research reveals that 78% of organizations experienced licensing cost increases over the prior 18 months.^[1] As a result, according to Omdia research, 69% of organizations are looking for a new platform.^[2] At the same time, sweeping partner program changes left many longtime channel partners unable to purchase new licenses, onboard new customers, or resell hosted virtualization capacity through the white-label model.

The midmarket took the hardest hit because it lost both of its lifelines at once: the affordable entry point that made enterprise virtualization fit a midmarket budget and the service providers that supplied the skills and hand-holding that an organization with a few hundred VMs and two admins cannot keep in-house.

The deadline

For businesses relying on affected service providers, a hard deadline looms: Many providers face an effective end of their legacy virtualization offerings, as their final commitment contracts expire through 2027. From then on, continued production use of hosted capacity without a valid subscription puts providers and their tenants out of compliance. That deadline sounds distant, but it is not. Assessment, partner selection, remediation, and the migration itself consume months, and SMBs with the leanest teams need the most lead time to move production safely. Planning and execution must start now.

Figure 1. How to address challenges in migrating virtualized applications

According to our research, compatibility with the existing infrastructure, skill gaps among IT staff, and overall migration complexity are among organizations' largest concerns when transitioning to an alternate hypervisor.^[1] These headaches become a lot worse when providers are no longer able to support the existing infrastructure.

A 'way out'

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization enables organizations to run and manage virtual machines alongside containerized workloads on a shared platform, Red Hat OpenShift. By providing automated migration capabilities, it can support a gradual transition from traditional virtualization environments toward a more modern application platform. Red Hat and its Specialized Partners have gained experience in migrating legacy virtualization environments from the first few years of Fortune 500 engagements. To best prepare for this move, organizations can generate a no-cost migration-readiness report through the OpenShift migration advisor tool. This tool connects to the existing virtualization management environment or ingests an autogenerated inventory file to generate migration recommendations. The OpenShift migration advisor offers a snapshot of which VMs are compatible for migration to OpenShift and flags migration warnings or potential blockers. The advisor serves as a foundation for the actual migration, which admins plan and execute through the migration toolkit for virtualization (MTV) and that is included with OpenShift Virtualization at no additional cost. MTV automates the mechanical work of moving each VM into OpenShift Virtualization through guided migration planning. Admins can use the wizard to connect their source providers, map infrastructure, create plans, and execute the migration.

Figure 2. Migration task responsibilities

GUI-oriented operations

Many SMBs will want to turn to partners for help in augmenting staff skills, minimizing migration risk, and ensuring smooth day 2 operations. For admins who built their careers thinking exclusively in a point-and-click management console, Red Hat has invested in GUI-oriented operations, so first contact with the platform is a console rather than a wall of YAML. Red Hat has added a virtualization specialization to its partner program, backed by a performance-based certification exam, and works with distributors and solution providers such as TD Synnex, Arrow, Ingram Micro, and Insight to support a network of service provider partners.

For an SMB, the math is simple: There are too many aspects of the new Kubernetes-based virtualization environment to take that plunge solo. Red Hat’s answer is its Specialized Partner program: firms such as TEKsystems, Stone Door Group, CDW, and Copy Cat Group, plus many others around the globe, that have guided earlier transitions and transfer knowledge along the way, so the internal team upskills while the migration runs.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization presents a familiar VM to the consumer, but underneath sit Linux, KVM, and Kubernetes, proven open source technologies that Red Hat has shipped and supported for more than a decade, and the operational model changes. The move resembles trading a flip phone for a smartphone. Calls still work, just as VMs still run. But the smartphone has a computer underneath that behaves differently and does far more once its owner learns it. The same applies here. The Red Hat OpenShift platform implicitly handles much of what admins previously configured by hand. The business keeps running while IT learns the new platform, and the skills gained compound over time.

The upside is that the destination is worth more than the starting point. The same platform that hosts the migrated VMs also runs containers, freshly built cloud-native applications, and AI workloads—when the business gets there—on one set of policies, one support line, and one skill investment. But that only holds for SMBs that start planning now, pick their partner carefully, and leave themselves the six months the migration typically takes.