VMware Price Increases – Abandon Ship? VMWare’s 100 per cent subscription move sees major customers transition to lower cost alternatives.
VMware Price Increases – Abandon Ship? VMWare, being one of the most popular virtual machine and hypervisor technologies, appears to be once again in the spotlight in relation to contention about its future.
It has not been more than 6 months since Broadcom acquired VMWare in November 2023 last year, in a deal that saw a $US69 billion acquisition of capital transfer hands, and already serious questions are being asked.
Since completion of the purchase of VMWare by Broadcom, VMware has announced significant changes taking effect February 4, 2024. Along with some portfolio changes, this includes a transition to 100 per cent subscription licensing and the end of sale for VMware perpetual licenses.
This is a model that’s not always accepted with open arms, as the subscription model invariably ends up leaving less money in the pockets of the end users with more profit or development embedded into technologies or add-ons that unwanted by end users.
“The corporation may have miscalculated VMware customers’ willingness to endure outrageous cost increases.”
This resulting increase in cost due to Broadcom’s decision to embrace a subscription model has resulted in a cascade of clients moving over to more cost-effective solutions – many of these clients are of a size not to be taken lightly.
The global stock market share registry operator Computershare appears to have just decided to leave VMware altogether, rather than suffer Broadcom’s new licensing regime and price increases.
Computershare, an Australian company providing software solutions and financial products, currently operates well over 24,000 VMWare virtual machines, has now decided to ditch the VMWare for another solution after it was invoiced an amount 15 times higher than agreed upon in the initial contract.
Abandon Ship
Computershare CTO Kevin O’Connor, who was recently speaking at a Nutanix Next conference, said, “the company will likely abandon VMware’s hypervisor soon to focus exclusively on Nutanix products.”
Computershare is currently in the middle of a massive systems’ migration, moving 24,000 virtual machines from the “other” hypervisor to Nutanix AHV. According to O’Connor, the plan will likely be completed next year and will pay for itself in just a few months. The company will emerge from this migration “stronger and leaner,” with costs lower than they were before the acquisition.
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In addition, the US operator of 28 hotel and casino venues across the United States, Boyd Gaming, has also come out ahead after dropping VMware in favour of Nutanix, which the CTO, Gregg Lowe stated at the same event. He said, “When Broadcom took over, they stopped a lot of innovation”.
Boyd Gaming has recently completed their migration of systems over to the new vendor, stating that he is thrilled with the move as he can now recover a 40-terabyte database in only 8 minutes.
The only known fact is that VMware’s powerful desktop hypervisors are now free for everyone, but it may be the case that Broadcom was never interested in this product line and had no intention of promoting it. Instead, the corporation may have miscalculated VMware customers’ willingness to endure outrageous VMware price increases just to access more VMware-related services and technologies.
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“Computershare appears to have decided to leave VMware altogether”
