VMware after Broadcom: the renewal decision

What changed

1. Subscriptions only. Broadcom stopped selling perpetual licenses and support renewals for them; VMware products are now sold only as subscriptions or term licenses. Existing perpetual licenses keep working while their support contract lasts.

   Source: Broadcom, “VMware by Broadcom business transformation”

2. Two main bundles. The product list was folded into two main offers: VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation.

   Source: Broadcom, “VMware by Broadcom business transformation”

3. Priced per core. From vSphere 8.0 Update 3, licensing is per processor core, with a minimum of 16 cores per physical CPU. Example: a server with two 8-core processors is still licensed for 32 cores.

   Source: Broadcom knowledge base article 432439

4. A support deadline. General support for vSphere 7 ended on Oct 2, 2025. vSphere 8 is supported until October 2027, with an optional two years of extended support at extra cost.

   Source: VMware Cloud Foundation blog, Aug 1, 2025

What analysts and customers say

• Gartner: a third of VMware workloads will move

  Gartner predicts that “more than a third of workloads currently running under VMware will run on another platform by 2028.” It warns that a full migration takes three or more years, and moving selected workloads can take up to a year.

  Gartner prediction, as reported by The Register, Sep 11, 2025

• Nine in ten users are looking at alternatives

  In a survey of 269 VMware user organizations (Dec 2025 to Feb 2026), nine in ten said higher licensing costs are prompting them to consider alternatives. 60% are considering running more than one hypervisor, and 48% have no plans to move to VMware Cloud Foundation. The biggest barriers they named were operational complexity (40%) and managing more than one vendor (38%).

  Unisphere Research survey commissioned by Rimini Street, a third-party support provider (vendor-commissioned), reported by The Register, Oct 7, 2026

Predictions and vendor-commissioned surveys are signals, not certainties. Your own costs, contracts and workloads decide the right answer.

Your options

• Renew and standardize

  Stay on VMware, but treat the renewal as a reset: one set of templates, names and settings across every site.

  Watch for: paying for more cores and features than you use.

• Right-size before you renew

  Count the cores you really need, retire idle and forgotten virtual machines, and only then negotiate.

  Watch for: an out-of-date inventory, which makes this guesswork.

• Add a second platform for some workloads

  Keep VMware where it earns its cost and run other workloads on a different platform.

  Watch for: two sets of tools, skills and processes to run.

• Move selected workloads

  Shift some workloads to the cloud or another platform over several budget cycles.

  Watch for: migration time and new running costs, covered on the hybrid page.

Most organizations end up with a mix. The order matters: inventory first, then the decision, then the contract.

The hidden cost: running it

Whichever option you pick, licensing is only part of the bill. The daily work around each virtual machine costs time too: getting it an address and a DNS name, backing it up, monitoring it, recording it in the CMDB and removing all of that when it is retired. Estates with many separate management servers repeat that work for each one.

Organizations that change platform without fixing that work carry it with them. Organizations that automate it and keep their records accurate can move, or stay, on their own terms.

CMDB health check · DevOps and observability · FinOps

Questions to ask your team

1. When does our VMware agreement renew, and what will it cost on the new terms?
2. How many processor cores are we licensing, and how many do we actually need?
3. Which virtual machines are idle, duplicated or have no owner?
4. Which of our systems still run on vSphere 7, and what is the plan for October 2027?
5. Which workloads must stay on VMware, and which could run elsewhere?
6. If we ran two platforms, who would operate the second one, and with what tools?

How we help

We advise; your teams and your chosen vendors do the building. We don’t push a platform, and if you buy through us, we tell you up front. Typical pieces of work:

• Renewal readiness: inventory, core counts, idle machines and support dates, gathered before you talk to your reseller.
• Options comparison: renew, right-size, add a platform or move workloads, weighed against your costs and skills.
• Operations review: how virtual machines are built, tracked and retired today, and what to automate first.

Sources

1. Broadcom, “VMware by Broadcom business transformation”. https://news.broadcom.com/news/vmware-by-broadcom-business-transformation
2. Broadcom knowledge base, article 432439 (vSphere licensing). https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/432439/vsphere-licensing-error-the-license-c.html
3. VMware Cloud Foundation blog, Aug 1, 2025. https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2025/08/01/sap-customers-running-on-vmware-vsphere-7-call-to-action/
4. The Register, Sep 11, 2025 (Gartner prediction). https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/11/gartner_vmware_migration_advice/
5. The Register, Oct 7, 2026 (Unisphere Research survey commissioned by Rimini Street). https://www.theregister.com/virtualization/2026/10/07/nine-in-10-vmware-customers-eye-the-exit-as-licensing-bills-bite/5301591

Checked Oct 11, 2026. VMware, vSphere and VMware Cloud Foundation are trademarks of Broadcom. King Tech is not affiliated with Broadcom or VMware.