As many will know, the world of data centre-grade compute and storage environments is undergoing significant and radical change with most of the VMware product suite currently being absorbed into Broadcom.
Announced last November in one of the biggest sales of its kind, Broadcom purchased VMware outright for a cool $69 billion USD. On a staffing level alone the merger is huge as Broadcom, with a headcount of some 20,000 employees, integrates VMware with a pre-merger population of more than 38,000.
Three months on we are seeing some key trends emerging:
- Perpetual licencing is no longer available – subscription licences only going forward
- OEM versions of VMware products are being withdrawn from sale (something of real concern for some vendors)
- Minor product variants and the total number of SKUs is being radically reduced to a smaller, core set of key products
- Prices are expected to increase in the near to medium term. However, for big projects that have already been designed and quoted, Broadcom will take this into consideration when requoting
Coming shortly on May 6 will be VMware/Broadcom’s ‘Day 2’ in which they finalise the transition across to Broadcom’s systems internally. Advice from Broadcom is to expect this process to take 2-3 weeks and that access to quotes will be limited during this time. If a need is urgent there will be access to trial licences in the interim.
If you have any questions regarding the new world of VMware by Broadcom please get in touch by clicking here or calling us on 02 8424 3500.