It has now been nine months since Broadcom acquired VMware and, in that time, Livingstone has helped several customers navigate their renewal with Broadcom. So what difficulties are they encountering? And how can Livingstone help you with your renewal?
Broadcom has migrated all customers off the VMware Customer Connect portal to the Broadcom support portal, and in this transition “only license keys that have an active support contract” were migrated. This means that unless you downloaded your entitlement before the transition, it will be much harder to gain visibility over any perpetual licenses that are owned.
Large swathes of VMware’s product portfolio have been moved to End of Availability, and in their place, Broadcom is pushing two main suites: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF). However, there is an illusion of choice for some customers, with Livingstone seeing Broadcom withdraw the VVF option for larger enterprises.
Livingstone has seen initial quotes based on Broadcom’s estimates of a company’s core usage that is far above what the company is utilising. Furthermore, we are also aware of Broadcom using the ‘phone-home’ functionality of VMware’s Skyline tool to estimate core usage for quotes. Both contribute to some of the huge price increases customers are being quoted at renewal, with uplifts of anywhere between 80-500%.
What is more, no exceptions on price appear to be made for the charity or education sectors. VMware had previously given discounts to these kinds of organisations, but this has now stopped under Broadcom, with one non-profit reportedly told, “VMware isn’t for everyone.”
As a result of this, it is imperative that you don’t leave your renewal to the very last minute and rely on Broadcom to tell you what you’re using. Livingstone is here to help you unpick exactly what you do and don’t need.
With such big changes and large price increases on the horizon it is imperative that your business is well equipped with an understanding of what you are consuming against your current contract, and how this maps to VMware’s new product sets and metrics.
Livingstone’s expert consultants can help you make sense of your data in the context of all these changes to ensure that you’re not spending any more than you need to with Broadcom at your renewal. Whether you have years left on your VMware agreement, or just a matter of months; whether VMware is a strategic vendor for you going forward and you want to minimize your spend; or whether you’re looking to move away from VMware and want to understand the alternatives, Livingstone will tailor its service to your requirements. Reach out to us today to find out more about how we can help you.
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About the author:
Robert Cannings, Managing Consultant at Livingstone
Managing Consultant at Livingstone Technologies, Robert Cannings is an expert in Software Asset Management. With sharp attention to detail on the changing landscape in SAM, he is always on the ball when it comes to understanding how best to be prepared to deal with software audits, as well as understanding the complexities involved with software licensing changes.
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