Broadcom has unified VMware products and services under two major categories: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere. Both are only available via a subscription, effectively ending the practice of perpetual licenses.
The model shift has empowered IT teams to truly pay for the services they need most, with a straightforward pricing model that helps organizations work out exactly how much they’ll pay. It also ensures customer organizations can unlock the latest features and patches via regular updates.
Upselling was historically a common practice in the software industry, according to Hock Tan, president and CEO at Broadcom, commenting in a blog post addressing the shift. This, he highlighted, was a barrier to true innovation, as well as causing customer confusion and frustration about missing out. Now, he added, with subscription licensing no customer misses out.
Put simply, the combination of streamlined product offerings and subscription modeling has given VMware customers more choice than ever before while providing proper platform security at the same time. Amid this, Broadcom is working with customers to ensure they get the most out of their switch from perpetual to subscription licenses.
Adjusting to subscription licenses
Businesses that have relied on VMware products and services for a long time may well have many separate perpetual licenses to manage. In this case, the shift to a greatly streamlined platform offering, with regular subscription costs attached, is a great new leap.
While IT leaders will need to audit their existing VMware licenses and map out a route to adopting the subscription model to take advantage of VMware product updates and releases going forward, Broadcom has taken many measures to make this an easy and attractive process.
One of the principal commitments Broadcom made as part of its migration to a subscription model was to allow customers to move VCF licenses across their endpoints. This means that for the first time, VCF software can be launched via a customer’s existing hosting provider, through a hyperscaler, or even their own data center.
Factored into the new simple pricing for VMware’s product offerings, this delivers unprecedented, direct control into the hands of IT teams. Existing customers seeking more control over their VCF software seek to gain the most from this switch, which opens them to a truly platform-agnostic deployment of the same VMware services to which they have become accustomed.
There’s simply no need for organizations to re-train employees with VMware software to make the most of the new model – and leverage it in whatever environment makes the most sense for their business strategy. Moreover, employees previously would have had to maintain licenses and keep track of disparate VMware purchases to get on with more useful work.
Broadcom has stressed that regardless of the chosen provider or environment, all of the core VMware offerings and add-ons available via subscription will receive the same improvements, support, and security upgrades.
Amid all of this, historic perpetual licenses are still honored by Broadcom. For example, customers who purchased a perpetual license of vSphere or VCF will not have their access to the product revoked and will continue to receive targeted security patches from Broadcom.
This helps provide continuity while customers move piece by piece to embrace the full package of offerings via the subscription model. IT teams seeking to make the best use of their subscriptions will see the value of migrating, given the simplicity of the new pricing model and the up-to-date versions it unlocks.
Partner reassurances
Helping customers get to grips with the new pricing models and make the most out of VCF and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) will also require hands-on assistance from VMware’s vibrant ecosystem of channel partners.
To this end, Broadcom has committed to working with partners to make the adoption of services as smooth as possible and to maintain a consistent technical experience for customers regardless of their chosen partner.
Broadcom recognizes the huge positive influence and impact that partners can have on customer migrations and their implementation of VMware bundles such as VCF. Brian Moats, senior vice president of global commercial sales and partners at Broadcom, emphasized this crucial relationship in a recent partner blog.
Moats explained that partners can expect closer collaboration from Broadcom in 2025, with support for their customers implementing VCF alongside help to measure and enhance customer success stories.
Alongside a partner such as TD SYNNEX, customers can establish their current service utilization and work out the products for which they need to adopt subscription licenses as a priority.
TD SYNNEX also offers a bring-your-own subscription option to customers, for maximum license portability for VCF hybrid cloud instances.
As part of its adoption of the subscription model, Broadcom also standardized the pricing for cloud providers through its per-core approach so that customers can directly compare prices across different providers.
All of this works to ensure customers have total flexibility over the scale of their cloud deployments as well as the provider they’re with while allowing VMware partners to play to their unique strengths on a simple, level playing field. It’s part and parcel of Broadcom’s simplicity drive and allows more organizations to embrace the cloud through whichever VMware partners provide the specific services they need.
Through as open an approach as possible and a clear, unified pricing structure for VMware customers, Broadcom strives to unlock innovation and streamline the experience of putting VMware products and services to work. While it’s no easy feat to upgrade legacy infrastructure or software to make the most of the newest offerings, Broadcom – in partnership with trusted partners like TD SYNNEX – is sure that when they adopt it for themselves, customers will prefer the new approach, too.
