VMware brings out new madly complicated enterprise buyer plan

VMware wants to leverage its dominance in server virtualization inside of corporate data centers into juggernaut status for enterprise private clouds, and to help that process along the company is rolling out a new enterprise purchasing agreement that will presumably get some grease to the skids and the palms as companies look …

[DrZarkov]

Easily anticipated...

Every enterprise software license scheme increases in complexity exponentially until it gets to a point at which the vendor introduces its own currency equivalent, in this case "VMware dollars" as I like to call them.

VMware would do well to remember that the next phase in product/license evolution after points/credits/cubits etc is that your product/technology space is made completely obsolete by being either included in the standard OS or in commodity hardware (CPU), or in some cases a mix of both.

When does VMware's license revenue go ex-growth and it becomes a support/upgrade business model?

[Mr Anonymous]

I like Red Hat's KVM license, one license per processor, everything included.

[RICHTO]

I like Microsoft Hyper-V license - completely free for the full product version!. And all the add on management stuff is available as a single pack with a single fee structure....

[Nate Amsden]

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

9% discount holy shit! that's amazing. Oh wait no it's not.. but vmware has never been too much up on discounting their stuff..

hardly worth the frustration I think, the customers that would benefit from this kind of stuff are probably wasting so much with low utilization anyways that an extra 10% is likely a rounding error.

[ElNumbre]

The other lot...

This still doesn't seem as complex as correctly licensing Citrix servers was when I tried it.

I vaguely remember (it was about 8 years ago) at least 6 set of licences were required, Citrix, Microsoft Server, Windows CALs, Office CALs and various others. I lasted about 2 months.

[Jim McDonald]

Re: The other lot...

If you talking about VDI then I take your point, but surely it's not a fault of VMWare/Citrix et al if you have to jump through MS hoops to do MS desktops.

[phuzz]

Re: The other lot...

The 'easy' way with Windows licenses is to stump up for one Data Center license per box, that gives you unlimited VMs for that box.

You start breaking even once you have about 8 copies of Windows Server per host I think.

[RICHTO]

Re: The other lot...

Datacentre Edition is licensed per CPU, not per server!

[Jim McDonald]

VMWare make the Citrix XenServer pricing model look even better, given they price per server (regardless of sockets, cores, threads, memory etc)... and a very reasonable price too.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this

The third time in as many years to float a new license program? Most people don't realize that VMware is only for the hypervisor and management of mostly their environment. Orgs still have to pay for the OS licenses and whatever else they use in addition to VMWare fees. If running Windows Server with a server app on top, one needs to pay for VMWare, the Server OS and CAL's and the application. With Server 2012, VMWAre no longer has major competitive advantages over Windows and System Center. The entire VMWare layer is redundant and expensive for a really large number of VMWare customers running Windows Server. The installation growth party is over for VMWare and now they need to manage how to keep existing customers that want to bail once Server 2012 is tested to be an adequate replacement. Server 2012 won't work for everybody, but VMWare knows it will work for enough people for them to be ringing the klaxons of serious alarm. Look for VMWares new customer growth and installed base numbers to decline seriously over the next two years. They can't withstand the onslaughts from Microsoft, Red Hat, Citrix and others. They had a good run though.

[RICHTO]

Re: What is this

Yes, this is why VMWare are basically screwed with the launch of Windows Hyper-V Server 2012. It does 90% of what VMWare does, scales higher, and is totally free! Over the next few years as existing ELAs come to an end I think VMware's revenue is going to massively decline....