No more Free Solutions and Perpetual Licenses from VMware

Broadcom explains that it will no longer offer free solutions and perpetual licenses, such a decision was made for the convenience of corporate customers and to simplify the product portfolio.

According to the VFC vice president at Broadcom, the new approach will allow partners to increase profits in the shortest possible time. For example, the WMware team will work in a single sign-on system, and this will greatly simplify the approach, as customers will not be confused by dozens of ways to log in to VCF. In addition, the products have been consolidated, and now there are 2 categories VVF and VCF.

It is stated that the new approach started implementation a year and a half ago, and after the merger of VMware with Broadcom, it was fully incorporated. Thus, customers who use VCF can save a lot of money.

VMware stated that at this stage, the company is charging Broadcom $350 per core, while previously, the same processing core was charged up to $700. As for the prices for the integrated solution, they will be about the same for customers using 2 products, for example, vSAN and vSphere. At the same time, using only one product will be more expensive.

At the beginning of 2024, the distribution of free versions of vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 8.x and 7.x), which were very popular for personal implementations and various experimental projects, was stopped. The basic functionality had some limitations in terms of memory size, number of processing cores, and did not provide access to advanced features.

In January, sales of perpetual licenses were stopped, and Broadcom will now be engaged in customer service. VMware partners will no longer be able to sign a contract directly through the portal.

In the fall of 2023, Broadcom announced that it was finalizing the agreement concerning VMware software. It was stated that, in this regard, Broadcom plans to lay off approximately 1.3 thousand VMware employees. All former employees will be paid bonuses and severance pay.