Amid big price increases and partner shrinkage, VMware as a company has constantly been in the news over the last 12 months. New owner Broadcom is shaping a new go-to-market, and used this week’s annual VMware Explore event in Barcelona to push its strategy home. IT Europa sets out the state of play for the channel.
The price increases for many customers have stemmed from VMware axing perpetual licenses and replacing them with subscription licenses, and bundling hundreds of products and services into just four core packages, leading to some users complaining they don’t need many of the features being bundled.
In Barcelona, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan stuck to the script, and again claimed the changes simplified the product portfolio for partners to sell, and that customers were getting value for money.
At a briefing for UK press, Tamar Brooks, managing director for Broadcom UK and Ireland, said: “We weren’t the first company to move from perpetual licenses to subscriptions licenses, but for some reason we were singled out when we did it.
“But, overall, we can show how our customers’ total cost of ownership is coming down.”
Sat with Brooks, was VMware customer Keith Woolley, chief digital information officer at the University of Bristol. Obviously, if he wasn’t a happy customer, he wouldn’t be presented to the press by an under fire vendor. But his thoughts were candid.
Asked by IT Europa as to whether he had had to renegotiate his university’s contract with VMware, he confirmed he had, albeit collectively with other UK universities, and he sat on the negotiation committee.
“There was a price increase, but it was an acceptable one to us, so it was an acceptable negotiation. You can talk about cost, but you also have to evaluate the value too.
“And the number of software SKUs [stock keeping units] has gone down, which means there is less complication and greater ease-of-use.”
On the controversy generated around the price increases, Woolley said the “hype was here, and the reality was there”.
Going forward, Woolley added: “We want longevity in our data strategy, we need more than three-year plans, and that includes our data centres, the way we cost projects is a challenge.
“The models are changing, and we now need ten-year strategies and outlooks – VMware Cloud Foundation [the supplier’s main cloud and data management platform] can help us work it out.”
VMware Cloud Foundation is a private cloud platform to “deliver public cloud scale and agility with private cloud security, resilience and performance”, says VMware. VCF can be deployed consistently in on-premises data centres, in hyperscale and partner clouds, and at the edge. Customers benefit from license portability, which enables them to purchase subscriptions of the new VCF software and have complete mobility across environments.
VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 and 5.2.1 were released this year, and Broadcom previously announced its intent to deliver VMware Cloud Foundation 9.
So what was announced at VMware Explore in Barcelona?:
-Major advancements across the VeloCloud SD-WAN product portfolio, as well as a new partner programme. This includes:
The launch of the VeloRAIN (Robust AI Networking) architecture that uses AI/ML to improve the performance and security of distributed AI workloads.
An unveiling of the new VeloCloud Edge 4100 and 5100 appliances - high end “AI-ready” edge appliances that scale to 100Gbps for large enterprises and complex use cases.
And the introduction of Titan, the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program for VeloCloud managed service providers, to help grow their businesses in the age of AI adoption by their enterprise customers.
-VMware Tanzu Data Services for VMware Cloud Foundation: These will natively integrate with VCF to deliver fleet-level automated lifecycle management, including deployment, backups, clustering, security patching and updates of leading open source data services, starting with PostgreSQL, MySQL, RabbitMQ and Valkey. Enterprise support for these open source solutions will be included.
-VMware Live Recovery will support Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) as a target Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE) for VCF workloads for both cyber and disaster recovery. This builds on VMware Live Recovery’s existing protection of GCVE sites as a source, and enables a consistent, secure and simplified experience for those looking to protect VMware workloads running on-premises or in the cloud through GCVE.
-VMware vDefend Advanced Service for VCF now offers GenAI-based intelligent assistance to help IT security teams proactively triage sophisticated threat campaigns and recommend remediation options. The enhanced threat defence solution with the Intelligent Assist co-pilot can help significantly lower false positives and the number of alerts, provide security teams greater situational awareness across their environment, and speed up remediation.
-Broadcom is making the Private Cloud Maturity and Optimisation tool available to partners. This tool empowers partners to help customers realize the technical and financial value of the private cloud, and chart a path forward to achieving their key goals and objectives. Partners get access to the Private Cloud Framework, an assessment resulting in a Private Cloud Maturity Index Score for their customers and prescriptive guidance from Broadcom. By leveraging the model, partners can accelerate customers outcomes, deliver strategic account plans faster, and develop and deliver new services.
