Broadcom era is a trust issue

Companies that spent 15 years treating VMware like plumbing are now talking about it in board meetings like it is a supply-chain risk. That shift started after Broadcom closed its VMware acquisition on November 22, 2023, and quickly replaced the old buying model with a tighter, subscription-only one. (broadcom.com 1) (broadcom.com 2) VMware’s core product is virtualization software, which lets one physical server act like many separate computers. It became the quiet foundation under payroll systems, hospital records, factory software, and internal company clouds because it was stable enough that many firms stopped thinking about who controlled it. (broadcom.com) Broadcom’s first big change was to end new perpetual licenses, which were the old “buy it once, keep using it” model. In January 2024, VMware by Broadcom said perpetual licenses, support renewals for those licenses, and older purchase-credit programs were being phased out in favor of subscriptions. (blogs.vmware.com) (broadcom.com) The second change was packaging. Broadcom collapsed a catalog of more than 160 VMware products into a small set of bundles, which means customers who once bought one tool at a time are now often pushed toward larger all-in subscriptions such as VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation. (redresscompliance.com) (schneider.im) The third change was the sales channel. Broadcom replaced VMware’s old partner structure in early 2024, and in June 2025 it removed the “Registered” reseller tier, cutting many smaller partners out of direct resale and concentrating business in higher tiers such as Select, Premier, and Pinnacle. (crn.com) (sdxcentral.com) That matters because many companies never bought VMware from VMware itself. They bought it through a local partner that knew their server room, their renewal calendar, and the weird custom setup nobody had documented since 2017, so when those partners disappear, the software becomes harder to negotiate and harder to change. (crn.com) (channele2e.com) The price shock is what turned an information-technology line item into an executive issue. Multiple licensing advisers and channel reports say the new per-core subscriptions, bundle requirements, and minimums have raised renewal costs sharply for some customers, especially smaller and mid-sized estates that used to run narrower VMware footprints. (licensefortress.com) (anglepoint.com) (schneider.im) By April 2026, that was showing up in the language around the market. IT-Online quoted Spinnaker Support saying enterprise software support for platforms such as VMware is now a board-level discussion because the decision reaches into finance, operations, and risk, not just procurement. (it-online.co.za) French publication IT Social described the response in terms of “degrees of technological independence,” which is a useful way to read what companies are doing. Some firms are staying on VMware and paying more, some are reducing exposure by moving selected workloads, and some are trying to leave the stack entirely so one vendor cannot reset the rules again. (itsocial.fr) Rivals are using that opening in public. At Nutanix’s.NEXT event in Chicago on April 7-9, 2026, chief executive Rajiv Ramaswami said about 30,000 customers had migrated from VMware to Nutanix, a claim reported during the conference as Broadcom backlash became a sales pitch for competitors. (nutanix.com) (world-today-journal.com) The real story is not that Broadcom changed a licensing program in 2024 or a partner tier in 2025. The real story is that VMware used to feel like concrete under the building, and after November 2023 it started to feel like a landlord who can rewrite the lease. (broadcom.com) (it-online.co.za)