VMware turmoil might turn into “VMwas”- what has happened so far - A short recap.
The recent VMware turmoil is unfolding publicly, causing many partners and customers to rethink their current strategy.
On January 4th, 2024, Johnson O’Ryan wrote, “Since Broadcom closed the $61 billion deal for VMware on Nov. 22, it has dramatically changed VMware’s products and business organization, consolidating VMware’s software stack into fewer offerings and then splitting the company between four separate business units inside Broadcom.”1
The simplification of the product portfolio was announced on December 11, 2023, and has the consequence that VMware offerings will solely be available as subscriptions or as term licenses following the end of the sale of perpetual licenses and Support and Subscription (SnS) renewals.2 VMware will work with customers to help them “trade in” their perpetual products in exchange for new subscription products.
Expect a 2x increase over 5 years
Avinash Shetty, VP Product Management, Nutanix and Lee Caswell, SVP Product Marketing, Nutanix Assessment: Expect a 2x increase over 5 years.3
vSphere Ent+ users estimated to pay more than 2x over 5 years
ITAM Industry Analyst AJ Witt commented, “Ooof, this is beyond Adobe-level seismic. It is not uncommon for VMware to be third in importance behind Microsoft and Oracle in many organisations, so the impact of this will be huge. The perpetual licenses plus necessary security updates were one of the big attractions of VMware. VMware is also notoriously poorly-managed by both sides, so there is no time to waste in getting your house in order.”
VMware’s Christmas Gift to 65’000 partners
On top of this news, VMware announced before Christmas the termination of all partnership agreements on December 22, 2023, effective February 4, 2024. 65,000 VMware partners including resellers and service providers are affected. Borncity.com also reports that this came just a few days after Broadcom switched its license models to subscription solutions. The VMware partners are now to be reselected and given new contracts.4
The new Invite-Only Program for partners will prioritize larger partners with $500,000 and $1 million or more in revenue. “For those smaller partners, particularly the roughly 4,000 VMware service provider partners, it will be tough” says Guenni at Borncity.com. The excluded partners will no longer be able to sell VMware products.
Frustrated partners are raising questions: “Do we need to start talking with Nutanix more than we’ve talked with them before? Do we need to get involved with Citrix? Do we need to talk with other platforms that before we didn’t need because we knew the VMware product really well?”
The Swiss Alternative
With kvant, Phoenix offers a Swiss alternative based on the hardened Openstack cloud platform software. We partner with Swiss service providers and resellers to address the urgent VMware migration needs in today's changing landscape. We created a Step-by-Step VMware Migration Process that can be individually adjusted to the partners’ needs and expectations to help the customer transition smoothly.
This challenging situation also offers unique opportunities to those open to exploring mature and widely recognized cloud platform software. Reach out to join the existing partners and deliver the next generation of cloud platforms to your customers.
Cheers,
Andrew
Learn more about migrating from VMware to kvant or join the Phoenix Partner Program.