Before I get to what’s in the title above. Some background. Last year VMware was sold to Broadcom for at ton of money. Then the first hint that Broadcom was going try to milk every last cent out of VMware that they could was that they took VMware accounts direct with next to zero notice and they terminated VMware’s partner program. All of that made it clear that things with VMware were changing, and not for the better. Today adds another piece to that puzzle with news that the free version of vSphere Hypervisor is being killed:
VMware vSphere Hypervisor (free edition) is no longer available on the VMware website
And:
Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End of General Availability).
Regrettably, there is currently no substitute product offered. For further details regarding the affected products and this change, we encourage you to review the following blog post: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2024/01/22/vmware-end-of-availability-of-perpetual-licensing-and-saas-services/
What this basically means is that Broadcom has pretty much signaled that it is no longer interested in smaller VMware customers. Not only that, the free version was a way for people to become familiar with VMware, especially early in their career. Because once they had them using VMware for free, they’d happily pay for it when they were in a position to recommend it. Now VMware is effectively saying F-U to all those people and the potential revenue that comes from those people. Albeit delayed. And I’m pretty sure that this is going to come back to bite Broadcom at some point and is quite literally a gift from heaven for companies like Nutanix, Scale Computing or Microsoft. Sales reps in those companies must be run off their feet by VMware customers who want to switch to something else other than VMware.
Mark my words, Broadcom has made a major mistake by doing this.
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This entry was posted on February 13, 2024 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags VMWare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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VMware To Kill The Free Version Of vSphere Hypervisor… Here’s Why That’s A Stupid Move By Broadcom
Before I get to what’s in the title above. Some background. Last year VMware was sold to Broadcom for at ton of money. Then the first hint that Broadcom was going try to milk every last cent out of VMware that they could was that they took VMware accounts direct with next to zero notice and they terminated VMware’s partner program. All of that made it clear that things with VMware were changing, and not for the better. Today adds another piece to that puzzle with news that the free version of vSphere Hypervisor is being killed:
VMware vSphere Hypervisor (free edition) is no longer available on the VMware website
And:
Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End of General Availability).
Regrettably, there is currently no substitute product offered. For further details regarding the affected products and this change, we encourage you to review the following blog post: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2024/01/22/vmware-end-of-availability-of-perpetual-licensing-and-saas-services/
What this basically means is that Broadcom has pretty much signaled that it is no longer interested in smaller VMware customers. Not only that, the free version was a way for people to become familiar with VMware, especially early in their career. Because once they had them using VMware for free, they’d happily pay for it when they were in a position to recommend it. Now VMware is effectively saying F-U to all those people and the potential revenue that comes from those people. Albeit delayed. And I’m pretty sure that this is going to come back to bite Broadcom at some point and is quite literally a gift from heaven for companies like Nutanix, Scale Computing or Microsoft. Sales reps in those companies must be run off their feet by VMware customers who want to switch to something else other than VMware.
Mark my words, Broadcom has made a major mistake by doing this.
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This entry was posted on February 13, 2024 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags VMWare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.