Equal Experts briefing: VMware licensing changes

Equal Experts is warning customers using VMware to urgently assess their VMware solutions, following the 2023 Broadcom acquisition. There are radical changes:

• Price shocks from 150% up to 1000% 1 2
• New per-core licensing minimums 3
• New subscription-based licensing and late renewal penalties 4 5
• Forced bundling and divestment of some VMware products 6
• Customer backlash and regulatory challenges 7

If you’re already navigating this situation, we sympathise and are happy to swap notes. If you haven’t started yet, read on and we can help you plan a way forward.

How we are helping our customers

• We’re already seeing an impact with our enterprise customers:
• We’re partnering with a £12B retailer on a major modernisation programme that includes ~6500 VMs. It includes migrating VMs from on-premises to Google Cloud VMware Engine and Google Compute Engine
• We’ve advised a £0.5B mutual insurance company on a migration planning process for ~500 VMs, after a recent renewal bill that was 3x higher

As a result, we’re recommending that customers migrate on-premise and cloud VMware solutions to cloud-native, virtual machine solutions such as AWS EC2, Google Compute Engine, and Azure Virtual Machines. We know it can take months/years to migrate from VMware, and it’ll impact your operations teams, so it’s critical to start planning now.

If you’d like to explore your options, we can introduce you to an Equal Experts technical architect who’s leading a technology modernisation programme, and dealing with these issues first-hand. We’d be happy to connect you – just drop us a message below.

Sources

1. Broadcom questioned by EU over VMware licensing changes
2. VMware Price Increase in 2025: What You Need to Know
3. Licensing and Subscription in vSphere
4. VMware Price Increase in 2025: What You Need to Know
5. Broadcom VMware Ups Minimum Core Purchase ‘Substantially,’ Levies Late Renewal Penalties
6. VMware by Broadcom: Portfolio Simplification and Transition to Subscription
7. Broadcom chief eyes AI opportunity after confronting VMware backlash