A Brief Recap
In recent years, VMware has gone through many changes. Back in 2021, Dell divested from VMware – which wasn’t much of a surprise. This is because VMware has become the clear virtualization platform market leader over time, to the point where branching out (again) was inevitable.
The spin-off from Dell Technologies gave VMware more flexibility to carry out its multi-cloud plan, as well as a more straightforward financing structure and governance approach.
Even more recently in May of 2022, Broadcom Inc., a leader in global technology that creates, develops, and provides infrastructure software and semiconductor solutions, announced an agreement in which it will purchase all of VMware’s outstanding shares.
The agreement is anticipated to close in Broadcom’s fiscal year 2023. So, what’s on the horizon?
What’s On The Horizon…
I want to start off with saying something very important:
What you are about to read has NOT been officially announced by any participating party.
Consider this a *wink, wink* or *nudge, nudge* – whatever you want to call it. The talk around town is that VMware is going to be discontinuing Perpetual Licensing.
You may have noticed some price increases over the past year – and I expect more of that moving forward as Broadcom and VMware inch closer the finish line of their agreement.
That being said – while there have not been any official announcements or official dates – I also expect for there to be an announcement before the end of 2023 that VMware will no longer sell Perpetual Licenses – following suit with many others in the industry.
The Forecast
This “rumor” that’s floating around town is based on facts from the past…
Do you remember VMware Horizon discontinuing perpetual licensing a few years ago – back in 2021?
Well, this situation appears to be no different. If we had to guess, we’d say you should prepare for exactly what happened with Horizon when they moved away from perpetual – pivoting to a SaaS or term option.
Horizon had three different versions of perpetual licenses (Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise), and the corresponding SaaS and term models have those same versions.
It looks like that model will mostly hold true for vSphere & vCenter’s movement away from perpetual licensing as the replacements are already out. Term licensing (on premise) for vSphere currently has Standard and Enterprise editions, and vSphere+ (Cloud subscription) does as well. Additionally, both are sold via processor core count and include vCenter Standard.
If you would like a full breakdown, here is a PDF outlining everything.
As mentioned earlier, none of this has made official by VMware, but based off previous events, we can come to an educated guess as to what’s likely to happen. That being said, even though this is speculation, it never hurts to get ahead of it. Renew your VMware Perpetual Licensing today to avoid the headaches later.
This information is continually evolving. Check out our latest blog about this here.
If you have any additional questions or concerns, please contact us and call 502-240-0404 or email us at info@mirazon.com.