Microsoft will phase out the current licensing structure for Azure VMware Solution (AVS). This will eliminate one option for organisations to use VMware in the cloud without licensing VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) themselves. Existing customers have until August 2027 to transition.

Under the current version of AVS, the necessary licenses for vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, NSX, and other components are included in the service Microsoft provides. That model is being phased out. Starting October 31, 2026, Microsoft will no longer sell new AVS environments that include these VMware licenses.

Going forward, customers must have their own VCF license from Broadcom, reports The Register. They can then use it within AVS via the “Bring Your Own License” model, also known as AVS VCF BYOL. Existing users of the current setup must transition by August 30, 2027, at the latest. After that, their existing environments will no longer run the same way.

Centorrino Technologies is replacing VMware across its hosted infrastructure platform with SUSE Virtualisation to avoid higher costs associated with VMware under Broadcom.

The Australian technology provider has already been running the platform in production and is now preparing for a broader customer rollout. That phase is expected to involve migrating thousands of virtual machine instances from VMware to SUSE Virtualisation across customer environments.

The project reflects a broader response from infrastructure providers and enterprise users to changes in licensing and subscription costs in the virtualisation market. For Centorrino Technologies, the work involved more than replacing one platform with another. It also had to migrate production workloads with minimal interruption, support multi-tenant hosting arrangements and maintain service availability.

A key part of the effort has been creating a repeatable migration framework for use across hundreds of customer environments. The process is intended to move workloads at scale while keeping disruption low.

Software giant VMware is suing an Italian distributor for around €30 million in damages, claiming in a London court that the company failed to ensure a customer agreed to delete old software licenses during an upgrade plan.

VMware said Computer Gross should have required Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo to agree to VMware’s licensing terms when it sold the bank VMware’s cloud computing software, according to a newly public High Court claim.

Computer Gross had previously bought the rights to resell the software, the claim says.

VMware said that under its terms, Computer Gross was required to ensure that Intesa deleted its old software licenses once it had the updated versions. But Computer Gross failed to do so, and Intesa confirmed that it never agreed to those terms, according to the claim.

VMware said that it gave Computer Gross an 82% discount on the standard resale agreement, based on the expectation that Intesa would retire its existing perpetual licenses, according to the filing.

The list price of the software was €36 million, but Computer Gross paid only €6.6 million, resulting in a discount worth €29.4 million, the claim says.

VMware said Computer Gross should have prevented the license duplication. By not doing so, Computer Gross essentially sold the software at a heavily discounted price.

As well as damages for the allegedly unauthorised price cut, VMware is seeking an order to prevent Computer Gross from continuing separate civil proceedings in Milan, the claim says.

Computer Gross breached a jurisdiction clause in its contract with VMware when it asked the Italian court to confirm that it did not owe VMware compensation over the software deal, according to the claim.

Broadcom has lost a round in what’s shaping up to be one of the more consequential antitrust fights in European tech regulation. The EU General Court dismissed the company’s request to suspend an information demand from the European Commission, specifically one that seeks documents related to Broadcom’s US legal advisers.

The ruling effectively tells Broadcom that EU regulators can, in fact, ask for those papers. And that trying to challenge such requests could, in the court’s words, weaken enforcement efforts in EU competition law.

Allstate Insurance Company has accused Broadcom of haphazardly issuing audits against it because the insurance firm decided not to renew its contracts with VMware and CA Technologies.

The allegations were made in relation to a lawsuit that VMware filed against Allstate in December 2025, according to The Register. In the complaint, Broadcom alleges that Allstate failed to comply with license audits, which Broadcom claims its contract with Allstate requires.

In a June 12 filing, Allstate suggested that Broadcom issued the audits in response to Allstate deciding to end business with its companies. Allstate’s statement reads:

Japan’s Fair Trade Commission has announced that it has closed its antitrust review into U.S. semiconductor giant Broadcom’s server virtualisation software licensing practices without finding violations of the Anti-Monopoly Act. The JFTC had launched a full-scale investigation that included an on-site inspection of subsidiary VMware’s offices in September 2024, but after thoroughly examining collected materials and interviewing relevant parties, concluded that no conduct constituting a violation could be established.

At issue was the new licensing framework Broadcom began implementing around April 2024. Previously, customers could select individual software products based on their needs, but the new system consolidated offerings into a subscription-based comprehensive package that includes storage-related products and other components. This change triggered a wave of contract modification notices to Japanese IT companies including Fujitsu, NSSOL, and Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ).

The JFTC had assessed that customers, facing difficulties switching to competitors’ products due to cost burdens and system migration challenges, may have been forced to purchase unnecessary products. Suspecting potential violations of the Anti-Monopoly Act’s prohibitions on “unfair trade practices (tying)” and “abuse of superior bargaining position,” the commission conducted an on-site inspection of VMware’s Tokyo office in September 2024.

However, through subsequent detailed investigation, the JFTC comprehensively examined actual transaction practices, the degree of disadvantage suffered by competitors, and the power dynamics between Broadcom and its business partners, ultimately determining that the evidence was insufficient to establish an antitrust violation. The commission explained that the review was closed because no facts constituting a violation could be confirmed.

During the review process, Broadcom voluntarily proposed remedial measures regarding changes to transaction terms. Specifically, the company offered to “establish an advance notice period to consider the content of condition changes when significant disadvantages arise for business partners,” and has already notified domestic customers of this commitment. The JFTC appears to have factored these proposals into its final decision to close the review.

Broadcom’s overhaul of its virtualisation software sales strategy is not limited to the Japanese market. The company has implemented similar licensing changes worldwide, and in Europe, the issue has drawn sharp criticism from CISPE (Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe), an industry group comprising major cloud operators including Amazon.com. The group has called on European competition authorities to investigate, creating international ripple effects.

Server virtualisation software is a foundational technology that enables the creation of multiple independent computing environments, called “virtual machines,” on a single physical server. It is a critical product directly linked to enterprise IT infrastructure consolidation and cost reduction, and forms the backbone of operations particularly for cloud service providers. Broadcom acquired VMware in 2023 for approximately $61 billion, securing overwhelming market dominance in this sector.

With the review now closed, Broadcom’s new licensing framework is expected to remain in place in the Japanese market for the foreseeable future. However, the JFTC issued a statement saying it “will continue to monitor competitive conditions in digital markets from the perspective of promoting fair and free competition,” clearly signalling that it has not relaxed its scrutiny of software bundling strategies by major IT companies. Depending on developments in Europe, the issue could once again become a focal point in international competition policy.

T-Mobile is asking a New York court to rule that Broadcom was contractually obligated to continue supporting its VMware perpetual licenses.

In its complaint, T-Mobile said it has tens of thousands of virtual machines using VMware software across approximately 303,140 CPU cores. It also said that it was migrating off VMware but noted the time-consuming and technical challenges involved in migrating over 1,000 applications.

It filed its lawsuit, which was first reported by The Register, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York in August 2025.

The mobile company claimed that in 2023, it bought perpetual VMware licenses, plus two years of support with the option to buy a third year. But after Broadcom bought VMware, it stopped sales of VMware perpetual licenses in favour of subscriptions and started bundling VMware products into a few, more expensive bundles.

When T-Mobile tried to extend support for a third year for $5,288,398.45, Broadcom wouldn’t allow it, per an August 2025 filing from T-Mobile. A Broadcom representative reportedly told T-Mobile via email: “Broadcom announced end of available of all perpetual products, which includes Stated Out Year Renewals for perpetual support.”

A judge granted T-Mobile an injunction that allowed it to receive support services from October 2025 through August 3, 2026, for $5.28 million, plus the posting of a $500,000 undertaking.

Now, T-Mobile is seeking a declaration that it was entitled to renew support services and further relief as the court deems necessary.

At one point, T-Mobile wanted support so badly that it offered $20 million for two years of software updates and support services. The company cited litigation costs and “mitigating interruption and security risks to both the network and the business” as part of its reasoning.

In a filing last month, Broadcom claimed that it has incurred $24 million in costs to provide T-Mobile with support for six VMware products and to assign it three dedicated support account managers. T-Mobile responded that it doesn’t use three of the six named products and has opened only two service cases this year.

The case is similar to a privately settled case that Broadcom had with AT&T over VMware support and to an ongoing case with Tesco.

Broadcom previously argued that T-Mobile’s case stands out because T-Mobile waited a long time before trying to extend support.

“Thousands upon thousands have successfully migrated to subscription,” a Broadcom lawyer said in an October 2025 hearing, per the publication. “T-Mobile is the outlier here that is in litigation. … Thousands upon thousands of customers have already transferred under these sorts of provisions and accepted and understood that end of availability applies.”

However, it’s worth pointing out that the financial and technical burdens involved in suing a conglomerate like Broadcom. Those challenges may have deterred organisations, especially smaller ones, from getting into litigation over VMware.

Neither T-Mobile nor Broadcom has publicly commented on the case.

Tesco are moving 40,000 server workloads off of VMware amid “abusive conduct” from Broadcom, recent legal filings claim.

Tesco filed a lawsuit in the UK’s High Court against Broadcom alleging breach of contract last year. According to a September report from The Register, the lawsuit claimed that in January 2021, Tesco bought perpetual licenses for VMware’s vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation, a subscription to VMware Tanzu, plus support services until 2026, with the option to extend support for four additional years.

But when Broadcom took over VMware in November 2023, it would not honour the deal and instead tried to get Tesco to pay “excessive and inflated prices for virtualisation software for which Tesco has already paid” and would not allow it to buy support services for its perpetually licensed software without buying “duplicative subscription-based licenses for those same Software products,” the initial complaint read.

Tesco, which reported 73.7 billion pounds (about $98.7 billion) in revenue in its fiscal year 2026, has since started migrating away from VMware and Broadcom’s mainframe products, according to late-May court filings.

In January, Broadcom stopped supporting Tesco’s VMware products, Tesco said, and Tesco has been paying for third-party support since. In its initial filing, Tesco also said that Broadcom refused to upgrade software or provide all security updates to customers without subscriptions.

One of Tesco’s recent filings reads: