VMware Price Increase – What You Need to Know and How to Mitigate

VMware, a long-time leader in virtualisation software, has been in the news lately for significant price hikes. 

These increases, caused by streamlining nearly 9,000 products into two primary bundles, implemented alongside a shift to a subscription-based model, have left many companies scrambling. 

Here’s a breakdown of what you need to understand about the situation:

 

The Scope of the Increases

Reports suggest double-digit price increases on core perpetual licenses and support renewals. Depending upon your deployments, some customers have even faced price jumps as high as 1200% under the new subscription model!

 

Reasons Behind the Change

VMware cites inflation, market conditions, and a focus on subscription services as justifications for the price hike and whilst reducing the product portfolio to two primary bundles is better and simpler, it means less flexibility for customers and adds to the price increase.

The company argues these changes are necessary to fund continued development and cater to evolving customer needs.

 

Impact on Businesses

The price hikes have caused a stir across the world, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses. Many are finding the new costs difficult to swallow, forcing them to re-evaluate their virtualisation strategy. This is compounded by the removal of any Charity and Education discounts and the removal of any OEM licenses.

 

Considering Alternatives

The price increase has opened the door for alternative solutions. Companies are exploring options like Open Source virtualisation platforms, cloud service providers, and offerings from competitor vendors.

 

What to Do Now

If you’re a VMware user facing these price increases, here are some steps to consider:

  • Evaluate your needs – Carefully assess your current VMware usage and determine if all features are truly necessary.
  • Explore alternatives – Research open-source options, competitor offerings, and managed service providers to see if they can fulfil your needs at a more competitive price point.
  • Reach out to PeaSoup – Infrastructure is in our DNA, if you are using VMware software please contact us. We have a VMware cloud platform and many customers use our Infrastructure live or as a DR position using a Veeam service. We’ve got a few alternative solutions that could hugely mitigate the uplift in VMware licensing prices.

 

    • We can work with you to reduce your CPU core count (and cost), providing a burst-able cloud position integrated directly into your environment.
    • We have operated the bundles that VMware has been delivering for 10 years so can provide advice on how to implement these to maximise your VMware position and reduce costs from elsewhere in your infrastructure.
    • We also provide Hyper-Visor agnostic solutions for DR and backup purposes, including the Hyper-Scale providers so you can always be protected but more importantly, have easy migration options.
    • Finally, we have, and continue to work with multiple Hypervisors including open source options so we can provide advice and share our experiences. 

 

VMware Price Increase - What You Need to Know and How to Mitigate