[German]VMware by Broadcom has signed new OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) agreements with the three major hardware vendors Dell, HPE and Lenovo. And there is an agreement with Microsoft for transferring VCF licenses to Azure VMware Solution.
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VMware deal with Microsoft
I've already covered a couple of days ago within my German blog post VMware by Broadcom: Dell raus? Microsoft drin, that VMware by Broadcom has signed an agreement with Microsoft that allows subscribers to the VMware Cloud Foundation Suite (VCF) to use these licenses (entitlements) on Microsoft's Azure VMware Solution. The agreement was announced on May 30, 2024 in the article Microsoft and Broadcom to support license portability for VMware Cloud Foundation on Azure VMware Solution by VMware with more details.
The Register has picked up on this theme here, mention that VMware users can purchase their VCF licenses either from Broadcom or from Microsoft if they opt for Azure VMware Solution. This means that after Google, Microsoft is also available as a cloud provider to be able to transfer the VCF license. Only AWS is not in the game.
Currently, however, the deal between VMware and Microsoft could still have unplanned skid marks for customers. I pointed out in the blog post Did the User Portal migration from VMware to Broadcom work for you?, that the migration of customers from the VMware portal to the new Broadcom customer portal, which was initiated at the end of April 2024, is a rocky road and going very slowly. It became clear that many VMware customers simply cannot access their licenses and VMware data at the moment. In this case, switching to the Azure VMware Solution while keeping the existing VCF license is a problem.
Agreements with Dell, HPE and Lenovo
Within my German article I mentioned, that Broadcom has concluded new OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) agreements with the three major hardware providers Dell, HPE and Lenovo. I've found the initial mention at The Register in the article VMware and Dell back together with fresh OEM agreement.
Dell has announced that it has signed a new agreement with Broadcom that will build on and continue more than 20 years of relationship between Dell and VMware. The agreement enables Dell to continue to deliver jointly developed solutions that help customers deploy modern applications at cloud scale and optimize their data centers.
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Dell's infrastructure offerings covered by this new agreement include Dell VxRail and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes for hyperconverged infrastructure, Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell PowerFlex software-defined infrastructure.
The Register writes that there is no news from HPE and Lenovo on this topic. On HPE, I found this CRN article from mid-April 2024 that an existing OEM agreement for VMware has been extended, allowing HPE to offer customers an alternative to buying Dell's popular VxRail product. According to German site CRN, the license agreement covers OEM VMware SKUs from HPE for one or three years – "specifically for required HPE hardware solutions and as an alternative to Dell's VxRail," according to the HPE notification to its partners.
This is good news for Broadcom – but it will be interesting for end customers when the prices and technical conditions for these solutions from the three hardware providers mentioned are on the table.
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Sadly, it is too little too late. They have poisoned the VMware brand.
We have a Dell VRTX system with two blades running VMware hosts, and Dell was our reseller for VMware. But this whole debacle meant that we had to search for a new reseller just to be able to renew our licence in time, and, as it did not include Dell, we found a stop-gap supplier for the renewal so that we can find a new non-VMware solution over the coming year to migrate to.
Broadcom only understands money, NOT the IT market.