Broadcom CEO Hock Tan penned another missive to VMware customers arguing that the software vendor has lowered the price of VMware Cloud Foundation, poured money into research and development, benefited partners and will complete the transition to subscriptions.
Tan also noted that Broadcom is working with extending support contracts for VMware customers struggling with the transition to subscription pricing.
The latest blog from Tan comes as Reuters reported the European Commission has received complaints about Broadcom's VMware pricing changes and the regulator sent requests for information to Broadcom.
Broadcom has had a steady cadence of blogs that appear to be aimed at allaying VMware customer concerns. To date, Nutanix has been the biggest beneficiary of VMware customer angst. It's unclear whether Broadcom's blog barrage is hitting the mark, but the missives collectively acknowledge that VMware customers may be a smidge disgruntled. The rundown:
- April 15. Tan makes case for VMware pricing and offers a few concessions.
- March 14. Tan recaps first 100 days of VMware purchase, noted that "this level of change has understandably created some unease among our customers and partners."
- Feb. 14. VMware acknowledges that changes have been rough on customers, but a long blog post could be classified as mansplaining.
- Dec. 11: VMware outlined product rationalization and subscription plan.
Here's a look at the key points from Tan in order of importance.
Broadcom acknowledges that "fast-moving (VMware) change may require more time." Tan wrote:
"We continue to learn from our customers on how best to prepare them for success by ensuring they always have the transition time and support they need. In particular, the subscription pricing model does involve a change in the timing of customers' expenditures and the balance of those expenditures between capital and operating spending. We heard that fast-moving change may require more time, so we have given support extensions to many customers who came up for renewal while these changes were rolling out. We have always been and remain ready to work with our customers on their specific concerns."
Customers can keep their existing perpetual licenses for vSphere. Tan wrote:
"It is important to emphasize that nothing about the transition to subscription pricing affects our customers’ ability to use their existing perpetual licenses. Customers have the right to continue to use older vSphere versions they have previously licensed, and they can continue to receive maintenance and support by signing up for one of our subscription offerings.
To ensure that customers whose maintenance and support contracts have expired and choose to not continue on one of our subscription offerings are able to use perpetual licenses in a safe and secure fashion, we are announcing free access to zero-day security patches for supported versions of vSphere, and we’ll add other VMware products over time."
VMware is standardizing the pricing metric across cloud providers to per-core licensing to match its end-customer licensing. Tan said this standardization will allow enterprises to seamlessly move VMware Cloud Foundation on-premise to cloud and back if needed.
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