VMware Kills vSphere Foundation In Parts of EMEA (theregister.com)
(Thursday December 11, 2025 @10:30PM (BeauHD)
from the what-to-expect dept.)
- Reference: 0180365047
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/12/11/2324224/vmware-kills-vsphere-foundation-in-parts-of-emea
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/11/vmware_kills_vsphere_foundation_parts_emea/
Broadcom has [1]quietly pulled VMware vSphere Foundation from parts of EMEA , pushing smaller customers toward far more expensive bundles and prompting some to consider jumping to Hyper-V or Nutanix. The Register reports:
> VVF is a bundle that offers compute, storage, and networking virtualization, and a platform to run containers. It's most useful in hyperconverged infrastructure and hybrid clouds, but is less capable than the Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud suite. Virtzilla said EMEA customers would need to check with their local dealer to see if VVF was still on sale in their country. "VVF is no longer available in some EMEA countries, but for the majority it is still available," a Broadcom spokesperson said. "Customers will have to reach out to sales reps or partners to determine availability of a given product in their region. These changes were recent."
>
> Our initial tipster said their reseller clued them into the impending change when VMware's new fiscal year started in November. This anonymous customer told us that their hardware fleet boasts thousands of compute cores and without more affordable options, his organization was looking at their annual VMware spend leaping by 10x from around $130,000 to $1.3 million. "We're currently looking to jump ship to either Microsoft's Hyper-V or Nutanix, as we can't eat (that) increase," they told The Register. [...]
>
> For the moment, a Broadcom spokesperson told us it has no plans to ditch VMware vSphere Standard, the basic server virtualization bundle which we're told makes up about 60 percent of the company's licenses and is a lower-cost way to access VMware's hypervisor than buying its full suite of VMware Cloud Foundation products. "We have not announced any changes to the availability of vSphere Standard in EMEA nor end of support for vSphere Standard," the spokesperson said via email. "The product remains fully available across EMEA today. However, Broadcom product availability can vary by region to align with local market requirements, customer demand, and other considerations."
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/11/vmware_kills_vsphere_foundation_parts_emea/
> VVF is a bundle that offers compute, storage, and networking virtualization, and a platform to run containers. It's most useful in hyperconverged infrastructure and hybrid clouds, but is less capable than the Cloud Foundation (VCF) private cloud suite. Virtzilla said EMEA customers would need to check with their local dealer to see if VVF was still on sale in their country. "VVF is no longer available in some EMEA countries, but for the majority it is still available," a Broadcom spokesperson said. "Customers will have to reach out to sales reps or partners to determine availability of a given product in their region. These changes were recent."
>
> Our initial tipster said their reseller clued them into the impending change when VMware's new fiscal year started in November. This anonymous customer told us that their hardware fleet boasts thousands of compute cores and without more affordable options, his organization was looking at their annual VMware spend leaping by 10x from around $130,000 to $1.3 million. "We're currently looking to jump ship to either Microsoft's Hyper-V or Nutanix, as we can't eat (that) increase," they told The Register. [...]
>
> For the moment, a Broadcom spokesperson told us it has no plans to ditch VMware vSphere Standard, the basic server virtualization bundle which we're told makes up about 60 percent of the company's licenses and is a lower-cost way to access VMware's hypervisor than buying its full suite of VMware Cloud Foundation products. "We have not announced any changes to the availability of vSphere Standard in EMEA nor end of support for vSphere Standard," the spokesperson said via email. "The product remains fully available across EMEA today. However, Broadcom product availability can vary by region to align with local market requirements, customer demand, and other considerations."
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/11/vmware_kills_vsphere_foundation_parts_emea/
Nutanix scores as VMware kicks own goals (Score:2)
by jezwel ( 2451108 )
We're jumping off VMware. I know of many others also.
I guess they really want to get rid of their customers?
Re: (Score:2)
by jhoegl ( 638955 )
Nutanix isnt as mature as VMWare, obviously. But its the best decision/move we have made in the wake of corporate greed.
Support is better than VMWare was, it has been the best response since support was handled by actual developers with detailed information on what is going on and a "here is what we are going to do" list.
If you are looking for an offramp that is the easiest to execute, Nutanix. They have software that moves your VMs from VMWare so well, you can time your migration down time. You prep th
What a lost opportunity for Microsoft (Score:2)
Microsoft could be making a killing on ex-VMware customers if they would just improve their management tools on Hyper-V. That keeps a lot of enterprise customers away. MS's management software for VM's is barebones compared to what VMware offers. But Broadcom seems determined to dare their customers to leave. They're pretty arrogant because they're confident most of their customers will pay the bigger bill instead of jumping to a far-less feature-rich solution.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm sure this doesn't align with Microsoft's long-term agenda. They're trying to eliminate on-premises and private infrastructure in favor of everyone running their workloads in their cloud. If I were switching from VMware, I'd be really cautious about switching to Hyper-V as well. What is stopping Microsoft from pulling the same style licensing switcheroo with Hyper-V in the future?