New Technology: The Projected Total Economic Impact™ Of Broadcom VMware Cloud Foundation 9

Reduced Infrastructure Operations Effort Through Automation And Fleet Management

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said VCF 9 reduced the time required to perform routine infrastructure operations by enabling more fleet management, improving lifecycle management, and reducing reliance on manual processes. These changes made day-to-day infrastructure operations more efficient and consistent across environments.

• The director of architecture and infrastructure at an insurance organization described meaningful gains in ongoing infrastructure efficiency, stating, “Lifecycle operations are about 70% faster, and provisioning that used to take days can now be done in hours or less.” These improvements reduced time spent on routine administrative work and allowed the team to focus more on maintenance and higher-priority activities.

• The chief information officer at a financial services organization highlighted the impact of consolidation and visibility, noting, “Having a more holistic view across the environment makes it much easier to manage and troubleshoot.” This shift reduced the effort required to diagnose and resolve issues that previously required coordination across multiple teams and tools.

• The vice president of platform cloud in telecommunications emphasized the impact of reducing manual processes, saying, “Network and infrastructure changes that used to take days can now be completed in hours.” Standardized operations, automated workflows, and centralized lifecycle management reduced the level of hands-on administrative effort required for infrastructure provisioning, configuration changes, and ongoing infrastructure operations, enabling the teams to complete common infrastructure tasks more quickly and consistently.

• Interviewees consistently pointed to automation as a key driver of efficiency. As one service owner of virtualization at a manufacturing organization noted: “The goal for the automation was to be faster, have more reliability, and create fewer errors during the process.” In practice, this translated into less time spent on repetitive tasks and more time available for modernization and optimization work.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization employs a dedicated infrastructure operations team responsible for steady-state fleet management tasks such as lifecycle management, environment maintenance, and routine operational support.

• The composite organization adopts more standardized operational practices and workflows as part of the transition to a unified cloud operating model. While staffing levels remain largely unchanged, teams benefit from reduced operational silos, greater automation, improved lifecycle management, and more consistent infrastructure processes.

• The modeled benefit reflects reductions in time spent on routine infrastructure operations work driven by lifecycle automation, fleet management, and more standardized processes enabled by VCF 9.

• The reduction in effort applies specifically to steady-state operational work and excludes time savings from network provisioning, ticket reduction, delivery acceleration, or downtime avoidance, which are modeled as separate benefits to avoid overlap.

• The model applies a range of time savings that reflects interview feedback, which indicates meaningful efficiency gains in infrastructure operations with benefits increasing over time as adoption expands and processes mature.

• The model assumes that most of the time savings is recaptured and redeployed to higher-value activities, such as modernization, optimization, and proactive engineering work, rather than resulting in direct headcount reduction.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $3,350,035 (low) to $4,207,402 (high).

Reduced Network Operations Effort Through Faster Provisioning And Fewer Manual Interventions

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said VCF 9 reduced the time and effort required to perform network provisioning and related operational work by introducing more automated, policy-based networking and reducing reliance on manual intervention. These improvements were especially visible in environments where network changes had previously depended on multiple teams, manual configuration steps, or ticket-driven workflows. Standardized provisioning processes, centralized management, and improved coordination across networking, infrastructure, and platform teams further reduced the need for manual ticket handling and repetitive operational activities.

• The service owner of virtualization at a manufacturing organization described the change in network effort very directly, stating, “In the past when we needed a new network, it was like work for one day and today it’s like 5 minutes.” In the same environment, time spent on network operations dropped from roughly 20 to 30 hours per month to about 1 hour.

• The director of architecture and infrastructure at an insurance company emphasized both provisioning speed and operational simplification: “We segmented our entire system and also when you create some resource, it knows where it belongs to attach. That’s also easy to manage in VCF 9 with the NSX.” The same interviewee said network changes that previously took half a day to a full day could now be completed in 1 to 2 hours.

• The vice president of platform cloud at a telecommunications organization described network enablement as a major source of operational delay before modernization and said the intended future state would reduce changes “from days down to hours.” This reflected the expectation that more integrated networking, automation, standardized provisioning processes, and centralized management would materially reduce manual effort, operational handoffs, and repetitive provisioning and configuration tasks.

• This interviewee continued, noting that NSX-enabled automation materially changed how quickly firewalling and network segmentation could be implemented. Network and firewall requests that had often taken days — and in some cases longer — were expected to be completed in hours once aligned to approved patterns and policies.

• The chief information officer in financial services said their team no longer had a dedicated network function because the platform had simplified and accelerated the work, stating, “We don’t have a network team.” The same interviewee added that network changes that once took days now took minutes or hours, reducing the amount of specialized manual intervention needed for routine work.

• Survey responses reinforced these interview themes. Respondents whose organizations use NSX reported substantial reductions in time spent on network provisioning and manual network ticket volume, showing that policy-based networking and automation meaningfully reduced both planned network work and reactive operational effort.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization employs infrastructure and network operations personnel who spend meaningful time each month on planned network provisioning and configuration work as well as manual interventions tied to infrastructure-related network activities.

• The modeled benefit captures two distinct value levers: less time required for network provisioning and manual configuration and fewer infrastructure-related network tickets requiring hands-on intervention. These two levers are treated separately to avoid blending planned work with reactive work. The model focuses on the reduction in labor effort associated with network provisioning and ticket resolution activities. Additional benefits related to faster fulfillment of network requests and reduced waiting time between ticket creation and resolution may also exist but are not separately quantified in this analysis.

• The provisioning component reflects the impact of automation and policy-based networking enabled by NSX, which reduces the time required to complete repeatable network configuration and enablement tasks.

• The manual intervention component reflects reduced network-related ticket volume and less hands-on operational effort after more networking activities become standardized, automated, and easier to manage within the platform.

• The model assumes that most of the time savings is recaptured and redeployed to higher-value engineering and operational work rather than treated as direct headcount elimination. This aligns with interview feedback that operational teams generally used the saved time to improve service delivery, maintenance, modernization, and other priority work. The productivity recapture rate represents Forrester’s estimate of the share of realized time savings that can be redirected to productive engineering and operational activities rather than being absorbed by normal operational inefficiencies.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $858,266 (low) to $1,524,465 (high).

Reduced Storage Operations Effort Through Automation And Unified Management

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said VCF 9 reduced the time required to manage storage environments by simplifying provisioning, lifecycle management, troubleshooting, and recovery-related tasks. These improvements came from more unified administration, improved storage efficiency (deduplication and compression), less fragmented storage management, and greater use of automation across routine storage operations.

• Survey respondents whose organizations use vSAN reported meaningful monthly time savings across several storage activities, including lifecycle management, new storage deployments, provisioning, troubleshooting and remediation, and downtime-related recovery work. The largest time savings appeared in lifecycle management, followed by storage deployment and provisioning.

• Storage efficiency also improved materially in some environments. The director of architecture and infrastructure at an insurance organization explained: “The storage compression, it’s amazing. The deduplication capabilities are insane.” In the same environment, this interviewee’s organization also reduced reliance on separate replication and recovery tooling, supporting a more unified operating model for storage administration.

• Storage resiliency reduced operational disruption as well as administrative burden. The service owner of virtualization in manufacturing told Forrester, “The complete Fibre Channel went down and all the vSAN survived.” This highlighted how a more unified storage environment reduced dependence on traditional storage architectures and simplified operations.

• Recovery-related storage operations also became more efficient. The director of architecture and infrastructure at an insurance organization stated, “Our switch off to primary site to secondary site is decreased from hours to minutes.” That same interviewee said their organization also eliminated additional software licenses tied to replication and recovery, further reducing operational complexity.

• Interviewees consistently described storage operations becoming easier to manage when they reduced the number of separate systems and tools involved in provisioning, lifecycle management, and recovery. The side-by-side synthesis reinforced this pattern, showing storage-related operational gains alongside reduced downtime and lower cost per terabyte.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization employs a dedicated storage operations team responsible for provisioning, lifecycle management, troubleshooting, and storage-related recovery support across a large enterprise environment.

• The modeled benefit reflects time savings in storage operations work driven by automation and unified management that VCF 9 enables. It captures recurring operational effort rather than infrastructure cost reduction or business downtime impacts, which are modeled separately.

• The model applies activity-level time savings across five storage operating areas: lifecycle management, new storage deployments, provisioning, troubleshooting and remediation, and downtime-related recovery effort. This structure reflects the survey evidence and keeps the benefit grounded in observed operational tasks.

• The model assumes that realization improves over time as teams mature operational practices and expand adoption of more standardized storage management workflows.

• The model assumes that most of the time saved is recaptured and redeployed to higher-value engineering, optimization, and modernization activities rather than resulting in direct headcount elimination.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $5,641,989 (low) to $6,685,011 (high).

Reduced Business Impact Of Storage Downtime

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said VCF 9 reduced the business impact of storage-related downtime by improving storage resiliency, simplifying failover and recovery processes, and reducing dependence on more fragmented storage architectures. These improvements helped interviewees’ organizations avoid or shorten disruptions that would otherwise affect storage-dependent workloads and business operations.

• The director of architecture and infrastructure at an insurance organization emphasized improvements in recovery speed and overall resiliency. In that same environment, their organization retired separate replication and recovery tools, reducing tooling complexity while also lowering the business impact of failover events through faster and more integrated recovery processes.

• Survey respondents whose organizations use vSAN reported that unplanned storage downtime declined by an average of 26%. That same survey also showed time savings in storage-related lifecycle and recovery activities, reinforcing that stronger resiliency and more integrated management reduced the operational burden and business impact of storage incidents.

• According to interviewees, storage downtime was treated as distinct from storage labor efficiency. Interviewees consistently described improved availability, faster failover, and more resilient storage operations as separate sources of value because they reduced the business consequences of outages rather than simply reducing storage team effort.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization experiences a baseline level of annual unplanned storage-related downtime affecting storage-dependent workloads and business operations. This reflects the reality of large, complex enterprise environments that rely on storage availability to support critical systems.

• The modeled benefit captures the reduction in business impact associated with fewer or shorter storage-related outages due to improved resiliency and system availability enabled by VCF 9. It does not reflect storage team labor savings, which are modeled separately in the storage operations benefit.

• The reduction percentage is based primarily on survey data showing average improvement in unplanned storage downtime, with interview evidence used to support the direction and credibility of the assumption.

• The business value of avoided downtime is modeled using a conservative average cost per hour of storage-related disruption. This reflects the operational and service impact of outages affecting storage-dependent applications and environments without extending the benefit into broader infrastructure downtime, which is modeled separately.

• The model keeps this benefit distinct from broader downtime benefits by focusing only on storage-related downtime and its direct business impact. This avoids overlap with the larger infrastructure downtime category later in the model.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $656,529 (low) to $1,718,912 (high).

Reduced Infrastructure Costs Through Improved Resource Utilization And Workload Consolidation

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said VCF 9 improved infrastructure resource utilization by enabling better workload placement, greater resource pooling, more efficient use of storage resources through capabilities like deduplication and compression and more standardized management across compute, storage, and networking. Rather than viewing this benefit as an immediate reduction in all infrastructure spending, interviewees more often described it as a way to use existing capacity more efficiently, avoid unnecessary expansion, and defer incremental infrastructure purchases.

• The chief information officer in financial services described how VCF changed capacity efficiency at scale: “We collapsed our environment by a pretty significant amount,” estimating that their organization reduced hardware by “somewhere between 25% to 50%.” In that same environment, improved infrastructure utilization came from consolidating workloads that had previously run in separate environments.

• The service owner of virtualization at a manufacturer described infrastructure savings more cautiously but still directionally, noting it was “maybe 20%.” That estimate was tied to savings potential from greater use of vSAN, including storage-efficiency capabilities like deduplication and compression, and a more consolidated stack — particularly as legacy storage and infrastructure refresh cycles were evaluated against the broader VCF environment.

• The vice president of platform cloud in telecommunications framed consolidation as a core objective of the platform strategy, emphasizing better workload placement and more efficient use of infrastructure across a large, distributed environment. In that context, improved utilization was not only about lowering footprint but also about delaying or avoiding incremental infrastructure investments while supporting hybrid and multi-environment operations.

• Survey results reinforced these interview themes. Respondents indicated an average 10% improvement in infrastructure utilization after adopting VCF 9, while cost reduction responses clustered around infrastructure-related categories such as hardware, IT labor, and public cloud consumption. This supported the view that improved utilization translated into real but partial infrastructure cost avoidance rather than one-for-one cost elimination.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization maintains a large annual infrastructure spend across compute, storage, and networking resources, reflecting the scale and complexity of a large enterprise environment. The model uses this spend as the baseline against which more efficient resource utilization can reduce future infrastructure requirements.

• The modeled benefit reflects avoided or deferred infrastructure spending enabled by improved workload optimization, resource pooling, and better visibility into utilization. It is a cost-avoidance benefit rather than a labor efficiency benefit.

• The model applies a utilization improvement based primarily on survey evidence, with interviewee commentary supporting the direction and credibility of infrastructure consolidation and footprint reduction.

• The model does not assume that all utilization gains are converted directly into savings. Instead, it applies a partial monetization factor to reflect the portion of utilization improvement that realistically results in avoided or deferred infrastructure spend. This keeps the benefit conservative and distinct from direct operational savings.

• This benefit is kept separate from storage operations efficiency, tool consolidation, and downtime reduction. It specifically captures the infrastructure-spend effect of using existing resources more efficiently and reducing the need for incremental capacity.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $6,043,050 (low) to $13,429,001 (high).

Eliminated Third-Party Tooling Costs Through Infrastructure And Management Consolidation

Evidence and data. Interviewees said VCF 9 reduced reliance on separate third-party infrastructure and management tools by consolidating functionality into a more unified platform. In practice, this benefit showed up as eliminated license costs, reduced maintenance overhead, and less administrative complexity from managing multiple point solutions.

• The director of architecture and infrastructure at an insurance organization described a direct retirement of recovery tools after the transition, stating, “We eliminated the additional software licenses [including Veeam and Zerto after moving those functions onto the VCF 9 platform].” In that same environment, the interviewee estimated those two tool costs at roughly $30,000 per year and $10,000 per year, respectively.

• The chief information officer in financial services described consolidation as part of a broader simplification of the security and infrastructure stack, noting, “We would not have been able to get to where we are now without the centralized security management.” In that environment, the team avoided layering in multiple additional point products and instead relied more heavily on integrated capabilities within the platform.

• The director at a real estate organization reflected the cost impact of rationalization at a larger scale. In the side-by-side interview synthesis, their organization reduced its estate from 30 tools to 15 and associated that change with about $200,000 in annual savings. This pointed to the financial upside of reducing fragmented tooling in a complex environment.

• The head of global IT and security in healthcare also saw direct savings from retiring point solutions. In the side-by-side synthesis, their organization removed two tools and associated the change with roughly $100,000 to $150,000 in annual value. This reinforced that the benefit was not limited to backup or recovery tooling alone.

• The global head of cloud at a financial services organization tied consolidation to much broader platform simplification. In the side-by-side analysis, their organization referenced eight to nine tools and associated the consolidation opportunity with about $2 million to $3 million in value, reflecting how eliminating separate products can reduce both direct software cost and the complexity of managing a fragmented stack.

• Interviewees consistently connected this benefit to platform consolidation rather than just lower license spend. The direct cost savings came from retiring tools, while the broader operational value came from reducing the overhead required to manage, maintain, and integrate those tools over time. Interviewees also cited reduced complexity and more centralized management of security and infrastructure functions as additional benefits of operating with fewer tools, although those impacts are not separately quantified in this benefit.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• Prior to VCF 9, the composite organization had accumulated a set of third-party infrastructure and management tools over time to support backup, recovery, monitoring, networking, security, and other operational requirements.

• The modeled benefit reflects direct cost elimination from retiring a subset of those tools after consolidating infrastructure and management capabilities onto VCF 9. It also reflects modest additional savings from reduced overhead associated with managing fewer standalone products.

• The model applies an average annual cost per tool based on interview evidence ranging from relatively small point-tool removals to more material consolidation scenarios. This creates a conservative blended assumption appropriate for a composite organization rather than any single customer profile.

• The model assumes that not every prior tool cost is fully eliminated, so only a portion of tooling costs is converted into savings. This keeps the benefit conservative and recognizes that some overlap, transition cost, or partial coexistence may remain.

• This benefit is kept separate from labor efficiency gains. The direct tool cost removal is captured here, while reduced administrative effort from managing a more unified environment is addressed in the operations efficiency benefits.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $543,377 (low) to $1,270,781 (high).

Reduced Business Impact Of Unplanned Infrastructure-Related Downtime Affecting Business-Critical Applications

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said VCF 9 reduced the business impact of unplanned infrastructure-related downtime by improving system stability, increasing visibility across environments, and enabling faster diagnosis and response when incidents occurred. These improvements affected business-critical applications more broadly than storage-specific resiliency alone and helped reduce disruption to end users and core business services.

• The chief information officer at a financial services organization described how the unified environment improved incident response during a major outage: “Ten minutes later, we have a full diagnosis. That’s correct. And an action plan.” In that same environment, the interviewee contrasted this with a previous overnight effort involving multiple teams and tools, underscoring how integrated visibility helped limit business disruption when business-critical services were affected.

• The service owner of virtualization at a manufacturer described how the environment maintained service continuity even when back-end issues occurred, noting, “From our customers, nobody noticed the problems we had in the back end.” In that case, management issues did not translate into visible workload disruption, illustrating how better stability and isolation reduced the business impact of infrastructure incidents.

• The director of architecture and infrastructure at an insurance organization tied resiliency improvements directly to customer-facing operations. In that same environment, faster failover and improved performance supported more stable delivery of business-critical systems and reduced the impact of outages affecting core services.

• The global head of cloud at a financial services organization connected VCF 9 to stronger resilience at the application level: “The risk of lateral movement is significantly narrowed. ... We can recover everything within about an hour.” In that environment, the combination of stronger segmentation, faster recovery, and more unified operations reduced the likelihood that infrastructure disruptions would cascade into broader business-critical outages.

• Survey respondents reinforced these interview themes. They identified security, compliance, and resiliency as a major realized benefit of VCF 9, and respondents reported the strongest improvements in reduced downtime in the event of a cyberattack or other operational disruption, along with simplified management and enhanced recovery readiness.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization experiences a recurring level of unplanned infrastructure-related downtime affecting business-critical applications, reflecting the complexity of a large enterprise environment with distributed workloads and high service dependencies.

• The modeled benefit reflects reductions in the business impact of broader infrastructure incidents due to improved stability, automation, and visibility, along with faster diagnosis and recovery enabled by VCF 9. This benefit focuses on application- and business-service disruption rather than storage-only disruption.

• The reduction percentage is informed by interview evidence and survey results pointing to stronger recovery readiness, reduced outages, and faster incident response in environments using VCF 9.

• The average cost per hour represents the business impact of downtime affecting customer-facing and operationally important applications, including lost productivity and service disruption. The model uses a conservative blended estimate rather than attempting to value every possible downstream consequence of an outage.

• This benefit is modeled separately from storage-downtime reduction and from labor efficiency benefits. It captures the broader business effect of avoiding or shortening infrastructure incidents that affect business-critical applications.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $593,562 (low) to $2,462,182 (high).

Faster Infrastructure And Application Delivery Through Automation And Standardized Provisioning

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said VCF 9 accelerated the delivery of infrastructure and application environments by standardizing provisioning workflows, reducing manual coordination, and enabling more automated deployment processes, including capabilities provided through VCF Automation. These improvements shortened the time required to stand up environments, support projects, and respond to business and development needs.

• The director of architecture and infrastructure at an insurance organization described the change in delivery speed very clearly: “Before, [delivery speed was] five to seven days. After, [it was] a few hours. Improvement [was] 80%+.” In that same environment, provisioning and onboarding became materially faster as standardized provisioning workflows, policy-based operations, automation, and more self-service access to infrastructure resources reduced delivery times and improved developer productivity.

• The same interviewee also connected the speed gain to business responsiveness, saying, “In a few hours, we are completing [it] from business side request to set up in infra.” The same interviewee noted that modular core systems could scale infrastructure rapidly when business demand increased, reducing delays tied to manual provisioning.

• The chief information officer at a financial services organization described a dramatic improvement in developer and application environment delivery: “When they wanted to make a change in Azure, it could take them a week. … Now, they need something [and] it’s there.” The same interviewee estimated the shift as roughly five days and 1 hour, highlighting how standardized provisioning processes and automation reduced the time required to deliver infrastructure and application environments.

• The service owner of virtualization at a manufacturer described the faster build out of infrastructure foundations that support downstream application delivery: “Today for a new workload domain … it takes one day. In the past, it was two to three days.” In that same environment, repeatable deployment made it possible to build, test, rebuild, and standardize environments much more quickly than before.

• The vice president of platform cloud at a telecommunications organization framed the expected future-state improvement in similar terms, saying that integrated automation and hybrid cloud portability should move deployments from days down to hours. This interviewee reinforced that this improvement would come from using common automation, standardized patterns, and GitOps-style approaches across environments.

• Survey respondents reinforced these interview themes. Respondents identified operational efficiency and automation as the top realized benefit area, and they reported the strongest productivity gains in provisioning virtual machines and containers, patching and upgrades, and infrastructure-related troubleshooting. Respondents also reported an average 13 hours saved per developer per month through self-service and automation and an 18% improvement in application delivery speed.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization fulfills a high annual volume of infrastructure and application delivery requests spanning new environments, updates to existing environments, and delivery work needed to support application and platform teams.

• The modeled benefit reflects time savings from faster and more standardized delivery of infrastructure and application environments. It captures request-based delivery work rather than steady-state administration, network operations, or downtime reduction, which are modeled separately.

• The average baseline time per request is based on interview and survey evidence, which shows that pre-VCF delivery often required multiple hours and, in some cases, multiple days because provisioning depended on manual coordination, operational handoffs across teams, fragmented tooling, and nonstandardized processes.

• The reduction factor reflects the combined effect of automation and standardized provisioning enabled by VCF 9. This includes shorter delivery cycles for infrastructure environments, faster turnaround on internal requests, and reduced friction in supporting application teams.

• The model assumes that the majority of the time savings is recaptured and redeployed to higher-value engineering and operational work. It does not assume additional business value from demand growth or increased request volume, which keeps the benefit focused on productivity improvement.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $1,803,356 (low) to $3,606,714 (high).

Reduced Financial Exposure To Material Security Incidents

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said VCF 9 reduced financial exposure to material security incidents by strengthening segmentation, improving visibility, and making response and recovery more effective. Rather than eliminating all security risk, interviewees described the platform as reducing the likelihood that incidents would spread broadly and limiting the operational and business consequences when security events occurred.

• The head of global IT and security in healthcare connected the platform directly to avoided incident impact. In that same environment, the interviewee also associated the security and compliance improvements with approximately $1 million in compliance-related value, illustrating how stronger controls and resiliency reduced the financial exposure tied to major security events.

• The chief information officer at a financial services organization emphasized how much harder it had become for attacks to spread, noting, “The risk of lateral movement is significantly narrowed.” In that same environment, this interviewee described microsegmentation as one of the most important outcomes of the broader platform, reducing the likelihood that a security event would become a larger business incident.

• The vice president of platform cloud in telecommunications described security as one of the central reasons their organization viewed VCF 9 as strategically important, particularly because stronger segmentation and integrated controls reduced the business risk associated with running critical telecom and enterprise workloads on a large, shared infrastructure foundation.

• The service owner of virtualization at a manufacturing organization described security as the primary operational driver, stating, “Our focus is on security because we’re the only company in the world who can build those optics.” In that same environment, stronger segmentation and faster patching reduced the exposure associated with highly sensitive systems and data.

• Survey respondents reinforced these interview themes. They identified security, compliance, and resiliency as major realized benefit areas, and respondents reported the strongest improvements in reduced downtime in the event of a cyberattack or other operational disruption, improved recovery readiness, and stronger security posture.

• Interviewees described this benefit as distinct from operational security labor savings. The value here came from lowering the expected financial impact of significant security incidents by reducing the chance of serious events and the scale of disruption if one occurred.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization faces a recurring baseline risk of material security incidents affecting critical systems, data, and business operations. This reflects the reality of a large enterprise operating complex, distributed infrastructure in environments where security events can have operational, remediation, and disruption costs.

• The modeled benefit reflects a reduction in the expected financial exposure tied to material security incidents due to stronger security controls, better visibility, improved resilience, and more effective containment and recovery enabled by VCF 9.

• The model uses a modest reduction in incident frequency and impact because interview evidence supported stronger security posture and narrower lateral movement risk, but interviewees generally framed this as risk reduction rather than the elimination of major incidents.

• The average financial impact per incident is intended to capture response, remediation, and business disruption costs associated with significant security events. The model keeps this blended and conservative rather than stacking multiple separate security-loss categories.

• This benefit is kept separate from compliance labor savings, vulnerability remediation efficiency, and downtime reduction. It captures the expected reduction in financial exposure from material incidents themselves rather than the labor effort associated with managing security operations.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $74,606 (low) to $397,896 (high).

Reduced Compliance And Audit Effort Through Automation And Centralized Control Management

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents said VCF 9 reduced the effort required to support compliance and audit activities by improving centralized visibility, strengthening control consistency, and making it easier to document and validate the environment. Rather than eliminating governance work, the platform made reporting, validation, and audit support more efficient and more repeatable.

• The director of architecture and infrastructure at an insurance organization described the compliance posture after implementation, noting, “Our score is above the average in terms of compliance and the best practices.” In that same environment, their team used benchmark-style assessments and reporting against the VCF 9 environment, which reduced the amount of manual effort required to demonstrate alignment with expected controls.

• The same interviewee also explained, “They made compliance benchmarks with the locally set up VCF 9. ... [The environment was] compliant from the start in many areas.” This shift toward stronger baseline controls meant audit and compliance teams no longer had to manually gather as much evidence after the fact.

• The vice president of platform cloud at a telecommunications organization emphasized the operational importance of improved accountability and cost control visibility, noting, “The promise that it brings on the showback and chargeback abilities is very near and dear to us.” In that same environment, stronger oversight and centralized visibility were part of a broader push to make infrastructure governance more transparent and auditable.

• Survey respondents reinforced these interview themes. They reported improvements across security, compliance, and resiliency, including compliance audits and reporting, and they also indicated that centralized controls and stronger recovery readiness improved how teams managed regulated and business-critical environments.

• Interviewees consistently framed this benefit as lower effort spent preparing reports, validating controls, and supporting audits in a more standardized environment. This made the benefit distinct from broader security-risk reduction and from day-to-day security operations efficiency.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization operates in a complex enterprise environment that requires recurring compliance, audit, and governance efforts to validate controls, prepare documentation, and support internal and external review activities.

• The modeled benefit reflects reductions in labor effort for compliance and audit support enabled by stronger centralized control management, improved visibility, and more standardized reporting and validation processes in VCF 9.

• The reduction percentage is based on interview direction and supported by survey feedback indicating improved compliance audits and reporting after adoption of VCF 9.

• The model applies this benefit only to labor efficiency for compliance, audit, and governance personnel. It does not assume avoided fines, penalties, or audit findings, which keeps the benefit narrower and more defensible.

• This benefit is kept separate from the modeled reduction in financial exposure to material security incidents and from vulnerability remediation efficiency. It specifically captures the reduced effort required to support compliance and audit work in a more centralized and controlled environment.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $82,439 (low) to $148,390 (high).

Reduced Vulnerability Remediation Effort Through Improved Efficiency And Automation

Evidence and data. Interviewees said VCF 9 reduced the effort required to remediate vulnerabilities by improving patching workflows, centralizing administration, and making it easier to identify and address lifecycle issues across their organizations’ environments. Rather than eliminating security work, these improvements shortened remediation cycles and reduced the amount of manual coordination required across teams. Interviewees also noted that faster and more consistent remediation reduced vulnerability exposure windows and lessened risks associated with delayed response or manual execution.

• The service owner of virtualization at a manufacturer described the improvement in patching and vulnerability response directly, saying, “If I patch the whole environment, I would say with VCF 9 [it’s] 30% faster.” In that same environment, the faster patching process reflected fewer manual steps and a quicker path to closing vulnerabilities across the infrastructure.

• This interviewee also tied the improvement to centralized lifecycle management, noting, “With the whole thing with fleet management and the way to download patches … we can actually be faster than before.” This pointed to a more streamlined remediation process rather than simply more staff effort.

• The side-by-side interview synthesis reinforced this pattern. It showed about 30% faster patching in manufacturing and 30% to 40% faster remediation in financial services, indicating that interviewees’ organizations were seeing measurable reductions in the time required to address vulnerabilities and apply fixes.

• Survey respondents reinforced these interview themes through reported improvements in security posture, reduced downtime in the event of a cyberattack or operational disruption, and more efficient operations across infrastructure, security, and compliance teams. Taken together, these findings supported a distinct efficiency benefit tied to remediation effort rather than broader incident avoidance alone.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews and survey, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization dedicates a substantial amount of annual labor effort to vulnerability remediation activities across security and infrastructure teams. This includes identifying, prioritizing, patching, validating, and coordinating remediation work across business-critical environments.

• The modeled benefit reflects reduced labor effort required to remediate vulnerabilities due to improved efficiency and automation enabled by VCF 9. It captures the operational work associated with remediation rather than the avoided business impact of major incidents, which is modeled separately.

• The reduction range is based primarily on interview evidence showing materially faster patching and remediation cycles, supported by broader survey evidence pointing to improved security posture and more efficient security-related operations.

• The model assumes that the majority of time savings is recaptured and redeployed to higher-value security and modernization priorities rather than resulting in direct headcount reduction. This reflects interview feedback that their organizations generally redirected security effort rather than eliminating roles.

• This benefit is kept separate from the modeled reduction in financial exposure to material security incidents. Its value comes from the labor efficiency of faster remediation, while the incident benefit captures the expected reduction in the financial impact of serious security events.

Results. This yields a three-year projected PV ranging from $370,976 (low) to $618,294 (high).

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees and survey respondents mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Improved adaptability of the infrastructure foundation. Interviewees described how a standardized, software-defined platform created a more flexible and extensible environment that can support evolving business and technology needs. Rather than requiring frequent redesigns or workarounds, their organizations could more easily adjust infrastructure to accommodate new requirements, improving long-term agility and maintainability.

• Improved operational consistency and governance across environments. Interviewees reported that standardization across compute, storage, and networking reduced variability in how environments were configured and managed. This helped enforce best practices, improve governance, and reduce dependence on individual team expertise, especially in large or distributed organizations.

• Stronger cross-team coordination and a more unified operating model. Interviewees said that consolidating infrastructure and management into a unified platform improved coordination between infrastructure, security, and application teams. This created a more aligned operating approach, reduced friction between groups, and improved shared visibility across environments.

• Improved platform confidence to support long-term modernization initiatives. Interviewees described increased confidence in their infrastructure foundation after adopting VCF 9. This made it easier to pursue broader modernization efforts, including application transformation and platform standardization, without concern about underlying infrastructure limitations.

• Greater alignment between infrastructure capabilities and business priorities. Interviewees said that moving to a more unified and standardized platform enabled their IT teams to better support business initiatives and respond to changing requirements. This improved their organizations’ ability to deliver on strategic objectives without being constrained by legacy infrastructure complexity.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement VCF 9 and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Enabling future adoption of advanced technologies such as AI, Kubernetes, and modern application platforms. Interviewees described VCF 9 as providing a standardized, software-defined foundation that supported emerging initiatives such as private AI services, Kubernetes-based application modernization, and cloud-native development. Interviewees indicated that this flexibility allowed their organizations to expand into these areas more easily over time, without requiring significant rearchitecture of their existing infrastructure.

• Supporting expansion into hybrid, distributed, and geographically dispersed deployment models. Interviewees said VCF 9 enabled a more flexible operating model across on-premises, hybrid cloud, and edge environments. This allowed their organizations to deploy workloads across environments based on business and technical needs and to extend their infrastructure footprint without introducing additional complexity or fragmentation.

• Providing a platform for incremental adoption of advanced services and capabilities over time. Interviewees described plans to expand their use of VCF 9 by adopting additional services such as advanced security, recovery, or networking capabilities. This ability to layer on new functionality over time allowed their organizations to realize additional value from the platform as their needs evolve rather than requiring new point solutions or major reinvestment.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Total Economic Impact Approach).