In Autumn 2023 the cloud sphere as we know it was shocked by the news: VMware company was acquired by Broadcom in what was later dubbed as one of the largest IT-deals in history. 3,000 laid off employees later, radical VMware changes were introduced to this behemoth in the world of virtualization.
Broadcom started reorganizing VMware, shifting its work areas into four divisions within the corporation: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), Tanzu (TNZ), Software-Defined Edge (SDE), Application Networking and Security (ANS). The enterprise still is dedicated to private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments, but for users almost everything they got used to has changed.
Let’s look into the transformation more closely.
Reduced product portfolio
Previously, the company’s portfolio had about 270 individual positions. Now, all VMware products have been reduced to two main products: the hybrid cloud platform Cloud Foundation and the virtualization workload platform vSphere Foundation. VMware stops selling standalone products, only in the above-mentioned bundles.
For instance, there is no longer an option to purchase the Aria solutions separately or in a form of SaaS. Instead, the functionality of Aria is already incorporated in VMware vSphere Foundation and VMware Cloud Foundation. Same fate struck HCX, vSAN and NSX.
Some products have lost budget versions, in particular, there will no longer be an option to use the ESXi hypervisor for free. This variant was ideal for testing and training, despite the limitations in the number of cores, memory, and functionality. And, unfortunately, now the company’s products will become less available. However, Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro have become free for non-commercial use instead — only because Player-level versions for these hypervisors will no longer be offered.
Balancers, firewalls, advanced Tanzu services will be available only as add-ons. Technical support system is included as Superior Support in addition to SRE Essentials for VCF and as Production Support for vSphere.
Even the customer portal is changed and switched from the VMware Customer Connect to the Broadcom Support Portal. As a result, the hierarchy of user folders disappeared and some functions were renamed (term “divide” is changed to “split”; “combine” is changed to “merge”).
New payment system
Broadcom has simplified product pricing, reducing the choice to four SKU bundles: VMware Cloud Foundation, vSphere Foundation, vSphere Standard and vSphere Essentials Plus.
The system of prepaid commitment has been introduced, so that now customers have to choose from subscriptions for 1, 3 or 5-year terms and pay during that time for a fixed number of cores. Keep in mind that the minimum license payment per CPU is now for 16 cores.
A significant change is the disappearance of perpetual licenses, with everything is now subject to the subscription model. Those users who already bought licenses will still be able to use the product but won’t be able to get software updates and technical help, as the Support and Subscription contracts providing them are also discontinued. Existing contract will be in force until their expiry. The Hybrid Purchasing Program, which included both Perpetual Licenses and Subscription Services in the form of Hybrid Credits, is also subsequently shut down.
You can calculate the new cost of services in a special calculator from Broadcom.
To ease the process of shifting to another payment method, some benefits were introduced. VMware Cloud Foundation subscription halved in price compared to the Cloud Editions Enterprise price (used to be $700 per core, now it is $350). vSphere Foundation also became almost twice cheaper, compared to Cloud Editions Essentials and Standard price, and at the same time it includes more, with vCenter, Aria and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid.
One of the new enhancements is the license portability and bring-your-own-license (BYOL) approach — when purchasing VMware Cloud Foundation, the user can migrate the system to another provider or to his on-prem servers and still keep the subscription, or conveniently create hybrid infrastructure with a single subscription.
New old products
In the case of network and security products, Broadcom decided to get back in time by reanimating the VMware’s old subsidiary, VeloCloud. VMware SASE is now VMware VeloCloud SASE, secured by yet another part of Broadcom — Symantec, and VMware SD-WAN is now VMware VeloCloud SD-WAN. This decision was based on willingness to regain customers’ trust by introducing the brand they already know as reliable. These solutions are now powered by artificial intelligence thanks to Symantec integration with its new SymantecAI suite of security offers.
Partnerships
VMware Partner Program has now become the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program — and, unfortunately, not all partners were invited to carry on cooperation. The main threshold is having an active partnership contract within the last 24 months. Over 18,000 resellers were invited to join in, as it is a by-invitation-only program now. They will be offered the status of VMware Cloud Service Provider Partner with a specification of either Premier Partner or Pinnacle Partner.
How to make it all easier
The main challenge is that now if the user requires only one specific service, such as NSX or vSAN, he has to buy a whole stack with other resources he doesn’t need. There are 3 options of what one can do in this case:
- Change nothing. This way the already acquired licenses will be in force, but no updates, security patches or vendor support will be available.
- Switch to a new pricing model. It requires long optimization process to find the cheapest way of using the services.
- Go to a cloud provider, which is a VMware trusted partner, and keeps on adapting to any changes. For instance, switch to GigaCloud.
GigaCloud provides its customers with:
The migration of your VMware infrastructure to GigaCloud is free and fast. With our services, there is no need to estimate costs or analyze everything on one’s own, as our experts will do everything much quicker and easier.
