The SAM Club has been in existence for over 14 years. Our expertise lies in offering objective licensing guidance, untainted by the interests of software reselling. Our commitment is to your financial benefit, ensuring you make the most informed and cost-effective decisions.
With the recent developments like Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, it’s essential to stay informed and consider all available options. At The SAM Club, we’ve been closely monitoring the situation and have some insights to share.
Broadcom’s initial announcement promised trade-in opportunities for customers with perpetual licenses with the move to subscription licensing, along with attractive upgrade incentives. However, our experience so far, both through quotes from resellers and discussions with VMware, suggests that these incentives have yet to materialise.
Broadcom’s current approach suggests there is a reduction in overall pricing, albeit with a bundling of products to enhance functionality. This means that the option to simply renew vSphere Enterprise Plus as a subscription is no longer available, Instead, customers are required to purchase vSphere Foundation which now includes Operations Management, a previously separate license at an increased cost. If you didn’t need Operations Management before, why consider it now?
VMware’s licensing model has undergone a change from a per CPU to a per core basis. Additionally, the new licensing terms require a minimum of 16 cores to be licensed for each CPU, which is also a factor with the increased costs.
So, what are your alternatives? One viable strategy is to maintain your perpetual license rather than transitioning to a subscription model. Broadcom’s President and CEO, Hock Tan, has assured that customers with expired maintenance contracts will still receive zero-day patches for supported versions. The SAM Club advises updating your vSphere licenses to the latest version promptly, as there’s no definitive timeline for version support.
However, there is a caveat: certain products like Site Recovery Manager aren’t explicitly covered by zero-day patches. Since it is an add-on to the core bundles, it can’t be purchased as a standalone subscription. While there is a possibility that it may be included in a future zero-day patch offerings, there is no certainty.
Looking beyond Broadcom, alternatives include Hyper-V, which comes free with Windows Server, and Nutanix. While Nutanix may present enticing deals, there’s no assurance that prices won’t rise once they’ve secured a larger market share. Additionally, transitioning to alternative solutions requires retraining and reimplementation, which diverts time and resources.
Some of The SAM Club’s clients, currently transitioning their primary applications like iManage to the cloud, are contemplating expediting their moves to Azure. They are considering reallocating funds from Broadcom to support this transition.
We are keen to hear your perspective and plans. How are you navigating these changes, and what strategies are you considering for your software asset management? Let’s discuss how The SAM Club can support your decision-making process in this new era.
