VMware By Broadcom Plots Pair of Cloud Foundation Releases

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: VMware by Broadcom will deliver a significant update to its flagship Cloud Foundation bundle in the middle of this year and follow it up with a major update early in 2025. Both releases will show off Broadcom's plan to make the package easier to implement and operate, and hopefully assuage customer concerns about price rises. More on that later. First, the updates. One release is currently scheduled to debut in July, according to Paul Turner, vice-president of product management and the leader of the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) team. The release will allow use of a single license key for all the components of Cloud Foundation, improve OAuth support as a step towards single sign-on across the VMware range, and add an NSX overlay that will allow implementation of software-defined networks without requiring IP address changes.

Turner explained those features as exemplifying the sort of simplification VMware by Broadcom thinks is needed to make Cloud Foundation easier to implement. A bigger release Turner hopes will debut in early 2025 -- though he would commit to only a H1 launch -- will be a "unified" release in which more of VCF is better integrated. Today, Turner admitted, VMware customers may have implemented vSphere and the Aria management suite, but might still need or choose discrete storage for each. Future VCF releases will increasingly unify the products so that silos aren't needed. Prashanth Shenoy, vice president for VMware by Broadcom's cloud platform, infrastructure, and solutions marketing, told The Register the release will be called VCF 9 and will represent "the fullest expression of Broadcom's vision for product integration." "When customers deploy VCF there are seams -- when they deploy networking and storage, they feel like they do not have a unified developer or operator experience," Shenoy admitted. VCF 9 will tidy that sort of thing up and make the process "seamless." Buyers can also expect improved log file analysis, the ability to acquire templates from a marketplace and adopt them as PaaS, and plenty more.

Turner and Shenoy told The Register that the two releases are hoped to make VCF adoption easier, and by doing so demonstrate the value of the bundle. Today, they argue, would-be hybrid cloud adopters using VCF are in reality integrating siloed products -- which doesn't prove the value of the vStack well. VCF 9's planned integrations, they argue, should demonstrate the power of the stack and the wisdom of Broadcom's decision to create a VMware unit dedicated to VCF. That team, they explained, means developers for each of the bundle's components work together on a unified experience, rather than to create their own product. It may also demonstrate the value of VMware by Broadcom's new licenses – which some users have complained are considerably more expensive now that subscriptions are required, and products are only sold in bundles. Sylvain Cazard, president of Broadcom Software for Asia-Pacific, told The Register that complaints about higher prices are unwarranted since customers using at least two components of VMware's flagship Cloud Foundation will end up paying less. He also noted that the new pricing includes support, which VMware didn't include previously.

and that is like an 2000+ seat min level?

[Joe_Dragon]

and that is like an 2000+ seat min level?

Cloud Foundation

[ls671]

Cloud Foundation releases maybe, but is it just me or doesn't it just sound like some mumbo-jumbo with two incompatible terms by definition? I mean to refer on how to build solid foundations yourself. /s

The modern world

[zkiwi34]

Where some genius comes up with the idea that the way forward is to ramp up the selling price regardless of prospective buyers ability to pay. That's what this seems like

in other words...

[MeNeXT]

Please shut-up now I promise I'll do something great in the future.

Yeah, small customers not wanted.

[luvirini]

>complaints about higher prices are unwarranted since customers using at least two components of VMware's flagship Cloud Foundation will end up paying less

Note that he is only talking about the big customers, they clearly want to get rid of small ones.

Re:

[groebke]

>complaints about higher prices are unwarranted since customers using at least two components of VMware's flagship Cloud Foundation will end up paying less

Note that he is only talking about the big customers, they clearly want to get rid of small ones.

Big ones either. We are working to, "lower our exposure," to Broadcom's mercurial whims. Now, where can I move ~50K VM's too...

Re:

[lucuher]

>complaints about higher prices are unwarranted since customers using at least two components of VMware's flagship Cloud Foundation will end up paying less

Note that he is only talking about the big customers, they clearly want to get rid of small ones.

Yeah no surprise. Not to mention some BS about support previously not being provided? What bunch of half truths is this again.

"Value Add" and "Bundling"

[Himmy32]

demonstrate the value of the bundle

VMWare has been trying to bundle a whole platform for big enterprises ever since "Project Pacifica" and the Pivotal acquisition. Which then can get some big price tags with a whole lot of lock-in.

It's not like it's a big secret and other big players are doing it as well. IBM bought Red Hat for OpenShift for that. Google has Anthos to try to push it.

But full stack on Kubernetes platform is far beyond what smaller shops want and pushing sales speak about value add in the bundle only goes so far.

Honestly I thi

Re:

[Seven Spirals]

Most customers reallydon't want the "value add" parts, the vendors just kinda force them. Satellite is a great example. Most Red Hat customers would rather have a publicly accessible server farm to pull down packages and patches from. They'd like it to have the software they want without having some shitty bolt on like EPEL. Instead, what they get is a system that absolutely won't give you patches or packages until you are fully entitled (read: $$$ PAID UP).

Oracle has them beat so badly. Red Hat charges

Self inflicted damage

[NinePenny]

I wouldn't ever have considered anything other than VMware.. until now. Other products viable? Sure! But VMware is what I knew, and it's been good enough at a reasonable cost for what you got, so it was a self imposed lock-in.

Now? Since I'm small fish, I don't feel like a customer that they care about. I would absolutly look at what else is out there, and likely choose somehting else.

Anyway, I'm sure they're broke up about it.

Re: Self inflicted damage

[guruevi]

This isnâ(TM)t the first time VMware has done similar things to their customers and small customers have always been low on the support totem pole. My question is why you hang on this long, we kicked VMware to the curb about a decade ago and the open source projects have all matured to be well beyond what VMware is capable of doing.

Re:

[echo123]

I share your experience and sentiment. While I'm an open-source developer using mostly free software, I would upgrade my VMware Workstation license every few years while using free ESXi server at home, ...while recommending VMware at my various Windows-only workplaces. Broadcom stopped all that, and rather abruptly too. So abruptly my past purchases have become pain points now.

Everyone is already moving off. Sorry.

[ebunga]

Vmware is dead as a product.

VMWare is Dead

[MikeDataLink]

Any customer that stays on the product at this point just has money to burn.

Re:

[Onthax]

One of our DC's is cheaper under the new licensing. It was rightsized and fairly modern already. Its our older DCs that haven't been updated in 5+ years that are getting the massive hit. I'm kinda excited for the changes and to see where the industry settles.

Re:

[geekmux]

One of our DC's is cheaper under the new licensing. It was rightsized and fairly modern already. Its our older DCs that haven't been updated in 5+ years that are getting the massive hit. I'm kinda excited for the changes and to see where the industry settles.

In the last 10 years, Broadcom grew their net worth from less than $50 billion to over $600 billion. Not sure there’s much left that’s “exciting” in the ever-growing world of nope-not-a-monopoly mega-corps buying and selling the future on whims and pocket change while the rest of us swing from the fine print strings paying increased costs meant to cover necessary executive bonuses.

Where the industry settles, will depend on who buys who for shit and giggles next.

Re:

[ebunga]

This week, sure, but their business plan is to keep moving the decimal point to the right every few quarters until they're down to the one custome who can't leave and is happy to pay $1,000,000 per cpu-core-second to run their innovative solution where the only new innovation in the past five years is a new licesning system.

Broadcom

[mufunk]

Can go away. 25 vmware installs are being swapped out for anything that's not Broadcom. I hope others will follow and send a message to the rate raising boneheads.

What Is a "VMware"?

[organgtool]

Is it like Proxmox?

Re:

[weepinganus]

Woosh.

FSCK Broadcom

[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

You ruined the value of VMware after you purchased it.

They already burned the bridge

[strikethree]

Anyone who has vision knows that Broadcom is looking for a comfortable place to rent-seek from. There are no offers they can give, even for free, that would allow anyone to believe that pairing with Broadcom is a good idea.