VMware End Of Availability of Perpetual Licensing and SaaS Services
This blog post updates and replaces the original KB article (KB 96168) published on January 15, 2024. The intent is to bring further clarity to some of the communications contained in the original article related to the End of Availability of certain VMware offerings. We are also clarifying how customers can continue to acquire solutions they are currently using if a standalone SKU for their product has reached End of Availability. We appreciate our customers and partners who shared their input on the communications to help us bring more clarity to this topic. Thank you.
As announced on December 11, 2023, VMware reached a new milestone in its journey over the last two years to streamline and simplify its portfolio and transition from perpetual licensing to a subscription model. VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation, available as subscription software only, are now our two new offers. We also offer optional advanced add-ons which can be used with these solutions.
As an outcome of this portfolio simplification, many VMware software solutions will only be offered as part of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) or VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF). They will not be available for purchase as standalone point solutions.
In the interest of clarity, presented below is a recap of the changes we have brought to our portfolio:
This portfolio simplification will allow customers to extract more value from their VMware investment, and enable VMware to accelerate delivery of new innovations and ease both deployment and management for customers.
Additionally, VMware by Broadcom also plans to offer “Bring Your Own License” capability that will allow customers to purchase subscriptions of VMware Cloud Foundation from Broadcom and flexibly deploy those subscriptions to VMware validated hybrid cloud endpoints, as well as their own on-prem data centers.
The other outcome of this transition is that the products listed in the table below are now at End of Availability (EOA) as standalone offers. Some offerings may still be available for consumption as part of VMware Cloud Foundation or VMware vSphere Foundation offers, which we have noted.
As detailed in this blog, VMware is also announcing EoA of the Aria SaaS services, but will continue to support those customers currently using Aria SaaS services until the end of their subscription term. At the end of the subscription term, customers will need to transition to either VCF or VVF. Also note that Aria SaaS Services are in maintenance mode, meaning no new features will be published, although security and critical updates will be provided during the active subscription period.
This announcement encompasses all licensing options, including Perpetual, Support & Subscription (SnS), SaaS/hosted and other subscription types. It also covers every edition, suite, and pricing metric for each product. Any exception to this coverage will be specified separately.
Next Steps
If you are an existing customer and purchased the above End of Availability products, but are not up for renewal there is no immediate action required at this time. VMware will continue to offer active support through the duration of your support contract. In the future, at the time of renewal, you can work with your VMware representative or VMware partner to align your go forward requirements to VMware’s updated portfolio of offerings.
For additional details surrounding this, please reach out to your VMware Account team and Sales Representative.