Virtual machines are anchoring modern enterprise infrastructure and the rise of agentic AI. This research report, in partnership with Broadcom and CNCF, reveals the evolution of VMs and production workloads as practitioners have been experiencing it.
On average, 53% of production applications run as VMs, with 71% of organizations expecting that share to hold steady. Rather than operating in silos, 61% report collaborative or fully integrated VM and container teams. Crucially, VMs are finding renewed purpose: 34% of organizations expanding their VM footprint cite AI and agentic workloads, with MicroVM sandboxing and confidential computing adoption surging to isolate model-generated code.
The future is shaping up to depend on both VMs or containers, secured and managed together. Download the report for strategic guidance on balancing isolation, utilization, and modern cloud native architectures.
Author:
- Adrienn Lawson, The Linux Foundation
- Foreword by Dilpreet Bindra, Broadcom
Additional Resources:
- Open data: https://zenodo.org/communities/linux-foundation-research
- DOI: 10.70828/QNUN8102