VMware clarifies portfolio rationalisation after deleting a post that shocked customers
VMware clarifies portfolio rationalisation after deleting a post that shocked customers
It includes an update to VMware's End of Availability (EOA) plan - with three extra products now added to it, including vSphere Enterprise.
Published on 29th January 2024
A week after publishing and then abruptly deleting an article that said 56 VMware offerings were now “end of availability” across any licensing type, the software company has clarified its portfolio rationalisation.
The company had roundly ignored requests for clarification from The Stack on a “KB” or knowledge base post published on January 15 detailing the move – which led to customer outcry and confusion over its plans.
But in an update quietly published on January 22 the company said that “we appreciate our customers and partners who shared their input on the communications to help us bring more clarity to this topic…”
VMware product plans clarified
A blog replacing the deleted KB clarifies the following:
“As an outcome of this portfolio simplification, many VMware software solutions will only be offered as part of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) or VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF). They will not be available for purchase as standalone point solutions. In the interest of clarity, presented below is a recap of the changes we have brought…
- "VMware Cloud Foundation is VMware’s new solution for customers looking to capture the value of full stack infrastructure with a platform that offers vSphere, vSAN and NSX with the full Aria management and orchestration suite with new services included.
- "VMware vSphere Foundation is VMware’s solution for data center optimization in traditional vSphere environments. It includes Tanzu Kubernetes Grid in addition to Aria Operations and Aria Operations for Logs as part of its standard suite of features. Additionally, customers with lighter requirements such as basic hardware consolidation or virtualization on a very small number of servers can still purchase subscriptions to vSphere Standard and vSphere Essentials Plus Kit.
- "VMware add-on services are available for VMware vSphere Foundation and VMware Cloud Foundation to further enhance the customer journey and address additional storage, security, disaster recovery, Generative AI and other specific use cases.
The blog, authored by Rick Walsworth, director of product marketing for the cloud infrastructure team, said hopefully: “This portfolio simplification will allow customers to extract more value from their VMware investment, and enable VMware to accelerate delivery of new innovations and ease both deployment and management for customers.”
Whilst concern amongst VMware customers remains heightened about renewal costs and licence changes, the update represents welcome clarity, not least as many exploring alternatives like Microsoft’s Hyper -V are encountering the kinds of issues that they dread in exploring alternatives for mature and entrenched VMware infrastructure-based workloads.
As security researcher Will Dorrman, posted on X for example: “In planning for a post-VMware world, I’m once again poking around with Hyper-V. It took less than an hour to encounter a dealbreaker bug: If you have a snapshot of a powered-on VM that has an ISO mounted, and that ISO goes away, you… can never power that VM on again?” he asked?
Given some hacky workarounds, he responded: “Thanks for the suggestion, but I’m merely in the ‘kicking the tires’ phase of this experiment. And needing to run a PowerShell command to make up for a lacking capability puts it in the probably-not boat…”
Broadcom has clearly frightened the horses and not just with smaller scale home workshop users. Whether it can reassure its base of large enterprise VMware customers – for whom concern about future quality of support and licence fees is rising – enough to stop them seriously actioning moves to Nutanix, Hyper-V or other alternatives remains an open question.
