Research Finder
Find by Keyword
Is the Virtualization Exodus Finally Becoming a Reality?
Automating the jump from hypervisors to open hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Key Highlights:
- The partnership aims to remove the technical friction and service downtime that traditionally stalls large-scale virtualization migrations.
- A specific, verified pathway ensures high-performance SAP HANA databases and application servers maintain certification during the transition.
- By using an agentless architecture, the Coriolis tool performs background data transfers to keep business applications running throughout the move.
- The integrated solution allows teams to manage virtual machines and containers through a single cloud-native interface.
The News:
SUSE and Cloudbase Solutions have announced at SUSEcon in Prague this week a partnership designed to automate the migration of virtualized workloads to open-source infrastructure. This collaboration integrates the Coriolis migration tool into the SUSE Virtualization stack to support moves from VMware and public clouds. The solution aims to deliver a non-disruptive experience where virtual machines are transitioned without requiring long maintenance windows. Read more here.
Analyst Take:
We see a market that is currently defined by a collective breath-holding exercise. Organizations are trapped between the post-VMware acquisition by Broadcom dynamic regarding virtualization, and the sheer terror of a migration gone wrong. The recent move by SUSE and Cloudbase Solutions offers a more mechanical, less artisanal approach to infrastructure shifts. For years, moving a virtual machine from a hypervisor to a cloud-native stack was a manual, high-stakes project. It often required the kind of weekend-long outages that keep IT directors awake at night. This new integration aims to treat migration as a background process rather than a singular catastrophic event.
HyperFRAME Lens data underscores this urgency, revealing that while 79% of enterprises expect to run multiple foundation models concurrently, only 14% report having fully AI-ready data foundations. This suggests that the "Exodus" is less about leaving a hypervisor and more about reaching an architecture capable of supporting modern workloads. Furthermore, as organizations evaluate these transitions, HyperFRAME research indicates that 23% of enterprises remain tied to legacy on-premises warehouse models, highlighting the significant technical debt that automated tools like Coriolis must overcome to be successful.
What Was Announced
The core of this announcement is the integration of the Coriolis tool from Cloudbase Solutions directly into the SUSE Virtualization environment. This tool is architected to use an agentless migration method, which means it communicates through public APIs rather than requiring software to be installed inside each individual virtual machine. The system is designed to perform incremental data synchronization, allowing the original workload to stay online in its source environment while the data is mirrored to the target. Once the data is fully synced, a final cutover is executed. The company was so convinced of the transition it demo’d it live on stage during the Day 1 keynote.
This specific partnership also includes a verified migration path for SAP environments. It is architected to support both SAP application servers and SAP HANA databases, ensuring they remain compliant with SAP's certified hypervisor ecosystem. The solution aims to deliver a unified management experience via SUSE Rancher, where the newly migrated virtual machines and existing Kubernetes containers sit side-by-side. SUSE is a key partner for SAP, so this was crucial to see.
In our view, the focus on SAP is the most significant part of the strategy. It is one thing to move a generic web server; it is quite another to migrate the crown jewels of an enterprise. SAP workloads have traditionally been the anchors that keep companies tied to legacy providers because the risk of a performance dip or a loss of vendor support is simply too high. By verifying the migration path for HANA, we believe SUSE is attempting to remove the final excuse for staying on expensive, proprietary stacks. It is a pragmatic play. They are not just selling a hypervisor; they are selling a way out of a contract.
Looking Ahead
The key trend that we are going to be closely monitoring is whether these automated tools can truly handle the "noisy" edge cases of enterprise networking and storage without manual intervention. My perspective is that while the toolset looks robust, the success of this partnership will depend on the ecosystem of service providers who have to actually click the buttons. The partner and GSI ecosystem will be key. The announcement signals that SUSE is no longer content being an alternative; they are positioning themselves as a destination.
Going forward, we are going to be closely monitoring how the company performs on its promises of "zero service interruptions" for large-scale SAP environments, as this remains the gold standard for migration success. HyperFRAME Lens data highlights that the market is increasingly favoring flexible architectures that modernize incrementally; the ability to bridge the gap between virtualization and Kubernetes will be the primary decider of long-term viability. As we track the move toward sovereign infrastructure, we expect the demand for vendor-neutral support to spike, particularly as enterprises seek to escape the rigid bundles and licensing shifts that have defined the proprietary landscape over the last 18 months. This partnership is a clear attempt to provide the bridge for that transition.
Steven Dickens | CEO HyperFRAME Research
Regarded as a luminary at the intersection of technology and business transformation, Steven Dickens is the CEO and Principal Analyst at HyperFRAME Research.
Ranked consistently among the Top 10 Analysts by AR Insights and a contributor to Forbes, Steven's expert perspectives are sought after by tier one media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and CNBC, and he is a regular on TV networks including the Schwab Network and Bloomberg.