VMware: Difference between revisions

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| Logo =Vmware.svg

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'''[[wikipedia:VMWare|VMware]]''' is a major player in the enterprise virtualization software market. The brand has been a subsidiary of Broadcom since November 2023.

'''[[wikipedia:VMWare|VMware]]''' is a major player in the enterprise virtualization software market. The brand has been a subsidiary of [[Broadcom Inc.|Broadcom]] since November 2023.

Since the Broadcom takeover, licensing and business model changes bordering on extortion, price increases, litigations against corporate users such as Siemens, deliberately ending support for [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/broadcom-sends-cease-and-desist-letters-to-subscription-less-vmware-users/ perpetual license] products, have left many customers facing skyrocketing virtualization costs.

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* Business model

* Market control}}

In 2024, Broadcom removed the ability to extend support for perpetual licensing, and required that customers switch to subscription licensing. The product you bought can no longer be updated, to receive updates you must throw away your perpetual licensing and buy new subscription licenses. AT&T claimed an annual cost increase of 1050%.<ref>{{cite web |last=Sharwood |first=Simon |date=2024-10-01 |title=AT&T claims VMware offered it a 1,050 percent price rise |url=https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/att_broadcom_filings_update/ |access-date=2025-09-08 |website=The Register}}</ref>

==Incidents==

{{Placeholder box|If the company page is short enough and/or the incident is not deserving of its own page, add incidents below in sub-sections (including the points outlined in [[Consumer_Action_Taskforce:Sample/Incident/Help|the incident help page]]) without linking/creating an incident page.

If the company has various incidents listed and/or this page is getting too long, create subsections linking to each incident while linking to the main article and including a short summary. To link to the page use the "Hatnote" or "Main" templates.

~~If the company has numerous incidents then format them in a table (see [[Amazon]] for an example). }}~~

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the [[:Category:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|{{PAGENAME}} category]].

===~~Example incident one (''date'')~~===

===Cease and Desist Letters/Notifications===

{{Main|VMware extraordinary price increase for licenses since acquisition by Broadcom}}

~~Short summary~~ of the ~~incident~~ (~~could be~~ the ~~same as~~ the ~~summary preceding~~ the ~~article~~).

An incident of a customer receiving a cease and desist letter from Broadcom, regarding perpetual licensing and other services offered.

~~===Example incident two~~ (''date~~'')~~===

[[File:Undefined - Imgur.png|thumb|alt= Re: Notice of Expiration of Support. Dear <Customer>, The above referenced Order(s) between ("Customer") and VMware LLC (as successor in interest to VMware, Inc. and hereinafter referred to as "VMware") expired on or before February 15, 2025 ("Expiration Date"). Accordingly, Customer's right to receive Support Services for the perpetual Software listed in the Order(s) expired on or before such date. As no new order(s) for subscription licenses and support services has been executed between the parties, Support Services are no longer available for the perpetual Software listed in the Order(s) and such Software licenses deployed in your environment are running unsupported. VMware, therefore, immediately demands that all use of Support Services associated with VMware Software, including Maintenance Releases/Updates, Minor Releases, Major Releases/Upgrades extensions, enhancements, patches, bug fixes or security patches (with the exception of zero-day security patches for vSphere 7.x and 8.x, CVSS score greater than or equal to 9.0, so long as those are generally provided by VMware at no cost) be ceased. The implementation of any of the aforementioned (excluding select zero-day patches as defined above) past the Expiration Date must be immediately removed/deinstalled. Any such use of Support past the Expiration Date constitutes a material breach of the Agreement with VMware and an infringement of VMware's intellectual property rights, potentially resulting in claims for enhanced damages and attorneys' fees. Additionally, Customer must comply with any post-expiration reporting requirements related to the Order(s) and governing license agreement. Failure to comply with such requirements may result in a breach of the Agreement by Customer and VMware may exercise its right to audit Customer as well as any other available contractual or legal remedy. If you have questions, please contact your Broadcom/VMware Account Director or authorized reseller. This communication shall not prejudice or waive any rights or remedies that Broadcom or VMware may have as respects the subject matter set forth herein, all of which are hereby expressly reserved. Sincerely, <Representative>|Notice of Expiration of Support by Broadcom<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-04-16 |title=Notice of Expiration of Support by Broadcom |url=https://imgur.com/FbrdQya |url-status= |access-date=2025-09-11}}</ref>]]

...

==Products==

{{Placeholder box|This is a list of the company's product lines '''with articles on this wiki'''.

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==See also==

{{~~Placeholder box~~|~~Link~~ to ~~relevant theme articles or companies with similar incidents~~.}}

[[Broadcom Inc.]]

<ref>{{Cite news |last=Harding |first=Scharon |date=2025-05-07 |title=VMware perpetual license holders receive cease-and-desist letters from Broadcom |url=https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/broadcom-sends-cease-and-desist-letters-to-subscription-less-vmware-users/ |access-date=2025-09-11 |work=Ars Technica}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=HJForsythe |date=2025-04-15 |title=VMWare threatening perpetual license holders than haven't purchased subcriptions. |url=https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1jzqbte/vmware_threatening_perpetual_license_holders_than/ |access-date=2025-09-11 |via=Reddit}}</ref>

==Alternatives==

Alternatives include the popular free and open source project [https://www.proxmox.com/ Proxmox], which has a less polished user interface but is otherwise functionally very close.

Alternatives include the popular free and open source project [https://www.proxmox.com/ Proxmox], which has a less polished user interface but is otherwise functionally very close and is backed by an Austria-based company that offers subscription-based support plans for corporate users.

Linux virtualization (e.g. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization) is available with corporate levels of support. The VMware hypervisor shell is based on Red Hat. Nutanix offers comparable efficiency to VMware.

==References==

{{reflist}}~~https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/broadcom-sends-cease-and-desist-letters-to-subscription-less-vmware-users/~~

~~https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1jzqbte/vmware_threatening_perpetual_license_holders_than/~~

~~https://imgur.com/FbrdQya~~

[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]

[[Category:Virtualization software]]

@@ Line 8: / Line 8: @@
 | Logo =Vmware.svg
 }}
-'''[[wikipedia:VMWare|VMware]]''' is a major player in the enterprise virtualization software market. The brand has been a subsidiary of Broadcom since November 2023.
+'''[[wikipedia:VMWare|VMware]]''' is a major player in the enterprise virtualization software market. The brand has been a subsidiary of [[Broadcom Inc.|Broadcom]] since November 2023.
 Since the Broadcom takeover, licensing and business model changes bordering on extortion, price increases, litigations against corporate users such as Siemens, deliberately ending support for [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/broadcom-sends-cease-and-desist-letters-to-subscription-less-vmware-users/ perpetual license] products, have left many customers facing skyrocketing virtualization costs.
@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 * Business model
 * Market control}}
+In 2024, Broadcom removed the ability to extend support for perpetual licensing, and required that customers switch to subscription licensing. The product you bought can no longer be updated, to receive updates you must throw away your perpetual licensing and buy new subscription licenses. AT&T claimed an annual cost increase of 1050%.<ref>{{cite web |last=Sharwood |first=Simon |date=2024-10-01 |title=AT&T claims VMware offered it a 1,050 percent price rise |url=https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/01/att_broadcom_filings_update/ |access-date=2025-09-08 |website=The Register}}</ref>
 ==Incidents==
-{{Placeholder box|If the company page is short enough and/or the incident is not deserving of its own page, add incidents below in sub-sections (including the points outlined in [[Consumer_Action_Taskforce:Sample/Incident/Help|the incident help page]]) without linking/creating an incident page.
-If the company has various incidents listed and/or this page is getting too long, create subsections linking to each incident while linking to the main article and including a short summary. To link to the page use the "Hatnote" or "Main" templates.
-If the company has numerous incidents then format them in a table (see [[Amazon]] for an example). }}
 This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the [[:Category:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|{{PAGENAME}} category]].
-===Example incident one (''date'')===
+===Cease and Desist Letters/Notifications===
-{{Main|link to the main article}}
+{{Main|VMware extraordinary price increase for licenses since acquisition by Broadcom}}
-Short summary of the incident (could be the same as the summary preceding the article).
+An incident of a customer receiving a cease and desist letter from Broadcom, regarding perpetual licensing and other services offered.
-===Example incident two (''date'')===
+[[File:Undefined - Imgur.png|thumb|alt= Re: Notice of Expiration of Support. Dear <Customer>, The above referenced Order(s) between ("Customer") and VMware LLC (as successor in interest to VMware, Inc. and hereinafter referred to as "VMware") expired on or before February 15, 2025 ("Expiration Date"). Accordingly, Customer's right to receive Support Services for the perpetual Software listed in the Order(s) expired on or before such date. As no new order(s) for subscription licenses and support services has been executed between the parties, Support Services are no longer available for the perpetual Software listed in the Order(s) and such Software licenses deployed in your environment are running unsupported. VMware, therefore, immediately demands that all use of Support Services associated with VMware Software, including Maintenance Releases/Updates, Minor Releases, Major Releases/Upgrades extensions, enhancements, patches, bug fixes or security patches (with the exception of zero-day security patches for vSphere 7.x and 8.x, CVSS score greater than or equal to 9.0, so long as those are generally provided by VMware at no cost) be ceased. The implementation of any of the aforementioned (excluding select zero-day patches as defined above) past the Expiration Date must be immediately removed/deinstalled. Any such use of Support past the Expiration Date constitutes a material breach of the Agreement with VMware and an infringement of VMware's intellectual property rights, potentially resulting in claims for enhanced damages and attorneys' fees. Additionally, Customer must comply with any post-expiration reporting requirements related to the Order(s) and governing license agreement. Failure to comply with such requirements may result in a breach of the Agreement by Customer and VMware may exercise its right to audit Customer as well as any other available contractual or legal remedy. If you have questions, please contact your Broadcom/VMware Account Director or authorized reseller. This communication shall not prejudice or waive any rights or remedies that Broadcom or VMware may have as respects the subject matter set forth herein, all of which are hereby expressly reserved. Sincerely, <Representative>|Notice of Expiration of Support by Broadcom<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025-04-16 |title=Notice of Expiration of Support by Broadcom |url=https://imgur.com/FbrdQya |url-status= |access-date=2025-09-11}}</ref>]]
-...
 ==Products==
 {{Placeholder box|This is a list of the company's product lines '''with articles on this wiki'''.
@@ Line 39: / Line 33: @@
 ==See also==
-{{Placeholder box|Link to relevant theme articles or companies with similar incidents.}}
+[[Broadcom Inc.]]
+<ref>{{Cite news |last=Harding |first=Scharon |date=2025-05-07 |title=VMware perpetual license holders receive cease-and-desist letters from Broadcom |url=https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/broadcom-sends-cease-and-desist-letters-to-subscription-less-vmware-users/ |access-date=2025-09-11 |work=Ars Technica}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=HJForsythe |date=2025-04-15 |title=VMWare threatening perpetual license holders than haven't purchased subcriptions. |url=https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1jzqbte/vmware_threatening_perpetual_license_holders_than/ |access-date=2025-09-11 |via=Reddit}}</ref>
 ==Alternatives==
-Alternatives include the popular free and open source project [https://www.proxmox.com/ Proxmox], which has a less polished user interface but is otherwise functionally very close.
+Alternatives include the popular free and open source project  [https://www.proxmox.com/ Proxmox], which has a less polished user interface but is otherwise functionally very close and is backed by an Austria-based company that offers subscription-based support plans for corporate users.
+Linux virtualization (e.g. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization) is available with corporate levels of support. The VMware hypervisor shell is based on Red Hat.  Nutanix offers comparable efficiency to VMware.
 ==References==
-{{reflist}}https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/05/broadcom-sends-cease-and-desist-letters-to-subscription-less-vmware-users/
+{{reflist}}
-https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1jzqbte/vmware_threatening_perpetual_license_holders_than/
-https://imgur.com/FbrdQya
 [[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
+[[Category:Virtualization software]]