Trust, not features, is the real deficit: VMware tries to appease SMBs

Broadcom's Acquisition Shift

Broadcom admits it put “too big a focus on VCF.” For many small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), VMware has become too expensive. Broadcom’s acquisition of the virtualization firm brought the end of perpetual license sales and the arrival of pricey, stacked, subscription-based bundles that priced out many SMBs. The most obvious is VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), VMware’s flagship private cloud bundle that has been Broadcom’s primary focus since taking over VMware. Many SMBs find that VCF is unaffordable and stuffed with unnecessary offerings. However, numerous customers have reported online that VMware sales representatives have still pushed them toward VCF, with some claiming that sales reps have told them that the lower-priced edition of VMware’s virtualization platform, vSphere Standard, was no longer available.

Internal Acknowledgment and Corrective Action

Speaking with The Register this week, Paul Turner, VCF’s chief product officer, said Broadcom’s new sales incentives encouraged the sales team to push VCF. “We corrected this,” Turner told the publication. He admitted that sometimes VMware had “too big a focus on VCF.”

Upcoming vSphere Standard Update

vSphere Standard update: VMware will release an “updated version” of vSphere Standard “soon,” The Register reported. More information will likely come in October during VMware’s Explore conference in Frankfurt. Ram Velaga, president of Broadcom’s Infrastructure Software Group, told The Register that VMware hasn’t updated vSphere Standard since 2022 despite an updated version of vSphere arriving with VCF 9 in 2025. This was because, Turner said, VMware was prioritizing improving VCF’s security. Velaga said that VMware prioritized VCF in an effort to promote private clouds as a more affordable alternative to the public cloud, which are easier to manage. “People could get distracted” if VMware introduced a low-end virtualization product then, the executive said.

Broken Trust

Dean Colpitts, CTO of Canadian managed services provider Members IT Group (MITG), which VMware cut from its reseller program after 19 years of partnership last year, told Ars that MITG is not doing any VMware business now and won’t in the future. I was shocked how unapologetic and straight faced the CEO was when he explained what Broadcom was all about during company-wide townhall after acquisition. "We are not in business of developing new technologies. We are in business of acquiring mismanaged great technologies and monetizing them." I think that tells you everything you need to know. I still can't believe regulators let the deal go through.