By Simon Sharwood VMware will port elements of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) to Nvidia's power-guzzling servers. Plans call for phased development to bring all VCF features to Arm over a series of releases. See the full article here .

Editor's note: this article added for posterity, in particular this statement: " To ensure that customers whose maintenance and support contracts have expired and choose to not continue on one of our subscription offerings are able to use perpetual licenses in a safe and secure fashion, we are announcing free access to zero-day security patches for supported versions of vSphere, and we’ll add other VMware products over time. " Source: https://www.broadcom.com/blog/a-changing-market-landscape-requires-constant-evolution-our-mission-for-vmware-customers Our goal since the Broadcom/VMware acquisition was completed last November has been to help our customers move fast in their digital transformation to position themselves for success. Even before the transaction was finalized, we had been listening to VMware's customers. As we moved from transaction to integration, we began to translate customer thoughts into a comprehensive go-to-market strategy for VMware Cloud Foundation, or VCF. Early in this process, I concluded that the previous go-to-market model was too complex and costly for VMware and its customers. It demonstrated that all too often, as innovative companies expand, decisions are made incrementally, not holistically as part of a larger, comprehensive strategy. Last month, I reflected on the first 100 days since we completed the acquisition, and I shared what I was hearing from customers. They want a simpler product and constant innovation with an eye toward security and resilience. There have been many questions about how we're putting this feedback into action. Today, I want to clarify what we’re offering VMware customers and address those questions head on. First, we remain steadfast in our decision to focus our resources on R&D, and continuing to develop a true, seamless private cloud experience for customers through VCF – one that is competitive with the public cloud. We are backing it up with billions of dollars in new investment to ensure its success. And, we have dramatically reduced the price of VCF to promote customer adoption. This refreshed strategy to increase competition with the public cloud and promote customer adoption will result in changes for our customers and partners, and we have moved to implement them. These changes were designed to lead to an integrated VCF solution that will bring broader long-term benefits to our valued customers both in their own data centers and in the cloud with increased portability to move workloads among on-premise data centers and supported cloud providers. Those benefits will accrue, whether the customer is a global enterprise seeking to leverage its digital capabilities, or a government looking to utilize VMware innovation to advance regional digital sovereignty. We are at a pivotal point in which infrastructure needs to scale and be resilient. That’s why we announced a simplified portfolio based on two core solutions – VCF and VMware vSphere Foundation, or VVF. VCF includes all compute, storage, networking, management, and support capabilities that deliver consistent infrastructure and operations across clouds, and comes at half the list price compared to past pricing. VVF is the alternative with enhanced compute, operational and management capabilities for customers who are not yet ready to take the plunge into a full-stack solution but need to manage across VMs and containers. We know our customers have a lot of options, so we continue to innovate and adapt to be ever more relevant for them. Second, we're making changes to deliver consistent customer experiences. One of the hot topics across customer and partner communities has been the changes to how we engage with cloud service providers. Broadcom will continue to create value within the VMware partner ecosystem, because partners are critical to our customers' success and our own success. That said, Broadcom is updating and incorporating the VMware partner ecosystem into the Broadcom partner programs, which requires some adjustments. The core principle for our new engagement with cloud providers is that end customers should have complete freedom to move their workloads from their own data centers to cloud providers, and between cloud providers. We are accomplishing this new engagement in two main ways: Standardizing the metric for our pricing across cloud providers to per-core licensing – the same metric used in our end-customer licensing – and providing license portability for VCF. This ensures customers will not face any licensing mismatch as they move between providers, and will avoid switching and additional licensing costs. This licensing metric is also consistent across our entire ecosystem, which will enable customers to compare proposals from partners, and increase choice and competition. Standardizing the technology stack for cloud providers on VCF. This ensures customers will enjoy the same technology and support experience across any VMware-supported cloud provider, and will remove technical barriers to customers moving from on-prem to cloud, switching their workloads from one cloud provider to another, or back to on-premise data centers, if their needs change. This freedom for customers to move workloads will intensify competition between cloud providers, leading them to deliver greater value to end customers. The license portability feature we have added to VCF is key to this strategy. Google Cloud is the first hyperscaler to support VCF license portability and we expect other partner and hyperscaler clouds to follow with similar support. We strongly believe this strategy will benefit our end customers. Given the need to set up the on-boarding process to accommodate our smallest cloud provider partners, and to help with the transition and ensure there is continuity of service for this partner group, we will expand the Broadcom Advantage Partner Premier Tier to accommodate any qualified, existing service provider and offer programmatic initial-year discounts for their existing installed base. In addition, smaller service provider partners who do not yet meet the Premier Tier criteria can take advantage of the ‘white label’ offers from Pinnacle and Premier Tier Service Providers. To ensure there is continuity of service for this smaller partner group, we will continue existing operations with this group under modified monthly billing arrangements until the white-label offers are available. Third, VMware will complete its transition plan to a subscription model that provides access to the most recent version plus support for a fixed term. VMware began this transition since at least 2018, and was one of the last software companies to adopt this model. Subscription licensing is the model all major enterprise software providers deploy today and ensures that customers have the latest and greatest in VCF while providing the kind of predictability needed to fuel continuous innovation for our customers. The subscription model ends “upsell” practices that were common in the software industry before the subscription transition, such as branding incremental features as new higher editions of the same product or new add-on products. These practices do not represent true innovation in core products, and cause customer confusion and frustration about missing out on new features. Subscription licensing eliminates these incentives. It is important to emphasize that nothing about the transition to subscription pricing affects our customers’ ability to use their existing perpetual licenses. Customers have the right to continue to use older vSphere versions they have previously licensed, and they can continue to receive maintenance and support by signing up for one of our subscription offerings. To ensure that customers whose maintenance and support contracts have expired and choose to not continue on one of our subscription offerings are able to use perpetual licenses in a safe and secure fashion, we are announcing free access to zero-day security patches for supported versions of vSphere, and we’ll add other VMware products over time. As we roll out this strategy, we continue to learn from our customers on how best to prepare them for success by ensuring they always have the transition time and support they need. In particular, the subscription pricing model does involve a change in the timing of customers' expenditures and the balance of those expenditures between capital and operating spending. We heard that fast-moving change may require more time, so we have given support extensions to many customers who came up for renewal while these changes were rolling out. We have always been and remain ready to work with our customers on their specific concerns. The evolution of VCF’s go-to-market strategy demonstrates that we're listening to and helping our customers by continually making our products better for them, and represents our ongoing, active engagement with our customers and partners to deliver an integrated, simplified solution. We will continue to move fast, innovate, and evolve our go-to-market strategy for the long-term benefit of our customers. To learn more about our VCF go-to-market strategy read more here .

Editor's note: this article was added for posterity, in particular these statements: The transition to the subscription model does not impact customers’ perpetual license rights. In addition, Broadcom announced that access to all patches for Critical Severity Security Alerts, as defined by VMware Security Response Center (see website here for details), will be available to all customers including those that no longer have active maintenance and support contracts. Supported versions of VMware vSphere are versions 7.x and 8.x. The whole article is available here Since Broadcom acquired VMware, we’ve aimed to help customers better position themselves for success in their digital transformation. In a recent blog post , Broadcom’s President and CEO, Hock Tan, detailed our efforts to do just that by evolving our go-to-market (GTM) strategy for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). We recognize there are questions about this GTM evolution. To supplement Hock Tan’s recent blog post, we’ve compiled responses to the frequently asked questions on our GTM strategy in an effort to help customers continue making informed decisions about our strategy and our products. We’re listening to our customers and will continue to innovate our products for their long-term benefit. Why is Broadcom moving to a subscription model? The subscription model has been the enterprise software industry standard for quite some time. “The trend for software companies to adopt the subscription business model continues to grow quickly at an 18.2% 2022-2027 CAGR and is forecast to represent 92.2% of total software revenue by 2027,” said Mark Thomason, research director for Digital Business Models and Monetization with IDC * . VMware has been transitioning to this model since 2018 and will be one of the last major software vendors to do it. A subscription model is good for customers, in part because it ends costly and complex “upsell” practices that were common under perpetual licensing models. The perpetual model is costly and complex. In particular, this model incentivized software companies to develop new features in the form of new products that customers had to pay new licensing fees for because they were not covered by prior perpetual licenses and were instead sold as separate add-ons or part of upgrade license tiers. This created uncertainty and more operational complexity for the customer and further increased overall costs for their systems. In conversations with our customers, there has been one common request: a simpler product combined with constant innovation. Our customers urged us to end the costly complexity that built up through the perpetual license model, and for good reason. When Broadcom acquired VMware, there were more than 8,000 different product SKUs created by separate, siloed engineering teams. And, as each team in VMware edited code, it needed to test that code against thousands of possible combinations of different products. The subscription model brings simplicity and innovation for customers. Subscription involves a single monthly or annual operating expenditure for the similar rights and services as existed under multiple perpetual licenses, but with the added assurance that the core product will be continuously upgraded with new features and functionality necessary to make use of evolving computing infrastructure – without additional costs. The periodic nature of subscription payments eliminates the incentive for a software company to proliferate complex add-ons to obtain additional customer payments. Rather, the software company is driven to innovate and improve the product to maintain the customer’s subscription. Customers face less lock-in under the subscription model because they no longer have to make large upfront license payments that would be lost if they switched to competitors. Software companies are willing to face this increased threat of switching because of the lower operating complexity from having fewer SKUs, a lower testing burden, and a simpler engineering organization focused on product innovation. We understand that for customers with significant installed bases of perpetual licenses, this model change will shift the structure and timing of payments. On an amortized basis, customers’ total expenditures are comparable under either model. We heard that fast-moving change may require more time, so we have given support extensions to many customers who came up for renewal while these changes were rolling out. We have always been and remain ready to work with our customers on their specific concerns. The transition to the subscription model does not impact customers’ perpetual license rights. In addition, Broadcom announced that access to all patches for Critical Severity Security Alerts, as defined by VMware Security Response Center ( see website here for details ), will be available to all customers including those that no longer have active maintenance and support contracts. Supported versions of VMware vSphere are versions 7.x and 8.x. What solutions are being offered and why? Broadcom is offering two simplified solutions that bring scale and resiliency , which is critical for large commercial and governmental organizations. • VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is our full stack, subscription-based private cloud platform. It includes compute, storage, networking, management and support, and automation capabilities – and it comes at half the cost compared to past list pricing. • VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) is an alternative for customers that are not yet ready for a full-stack solution. It integrates compute with features for automation and administration needed for medium-sized deployments. vSphere Standard, which may be appropriate for very small deployments, will remain available too. Broadcom also has introduced improved VCF license portability , which will allow customers to deploy the product on-prem and then take the subscription to a supported hyperscaler or VMware CSP – and, crucially, back again to their own data centers – at any time. Customers will retain their license subscriptions as they move their workloads. Can you detail the subscription pricing for VCF? Broadcom has dramatically cut prices for VCF . Broadcom has cut prices relative to VMware’s list prices for subscriptions with a similar combination of functionality, reflecting the benefits of a more integrated solution. Broadcom expects the VCF integrated solution to significantly lower the total costs of ownership (TCO) for customers, with savings on infrastructure, facilities, and labor productivity compared to that of native public cloud. How will VCF impact the overall cloud market? VCF will bring more choice and more competition to the cloud . Broadcom has met with hundreds of customers and learned that many currently don’t have the capabilities to host their own workloads on-prem, locking them to a specific cloud platform. It’s almost impossible for enterprises to decouple their products from cloud platforms without significant expense. Switching between cloud platforms entails significant costs for customers – something that has attracted the attention of regulators worldwide. Many customers also realize that monthly fees for these services have risen considerably, especially with large scale usage. Standardizing and simplifying the VCF technology stack brings benefits to both cloud service providers (CSPs) and end-users by ensuring customers enjoy the same technology experience across any VMware-supported cloud provider. It also provides consistent support and the advantage of choice among different cloud environments, whether that’s on-prem, public cloud, or hybrid cloud. Lastly, enhancing the customer experience will drive the adoption of VMware-based cloud solutions and benefit both cloud service providers and their users. This is great news for global commercial enterprises leveraging digital capabilities or governments advancing national or regional digital sovereignty. VCF offers a portfolio that is secure and resilient and removes technical and cost barriers that discourage customers from hosting their workloads on-prem or switching their workloads. This freedom for customers to move workloads will intensify competition between CSPs. For Europe-based CSPs or commercial and government end-user organizations seeking to achieve data sovereignty, VCF provides the capabilities to build individualized private clouds or switch among different cloud environments. How will CSPs transition to a simplified solution? Broadcom is creating an onboarding process that accommodates CSPs and ensures there is continuity of service for this partner group. Specifically, we will expand the Broadcom Partner Advantage Premier Tier to serve any qualified, existing service provider and offer programmatic initial-year discounts for existing installed bases. In addition, our smallest service provider partners that do not yet meet the Premier Tier criteria can take advantage of “white label” offers from Pinnacle and Premier Tier Service Providers. To ensure there is continuity of service for this smaller partner group, we will continue existing operations with this group under modified monthly billing arrangements until the white-label offers are available. What do these changes mean for the Partner Ecosystem? Broadcom is committed to continuing to create value within the VMware partner ecosystem . We have said many times that partners are critical to our customers’ success and our own success. Through conversations with hundreds of our global partners, we heard a consistent message: solve channel conflict, incentivize long-term product adoption, and simplify the process. To that end, we are incorporating the VMware partner ecosystems into the award-winning Broadcom partner programs – starting with the thousands of VMware partners welcomed in the first quarter this year. By focusing our investment on the integrated Broadcom Advantage Partner program, we can evolve our platform and help our partners achieve even greater opportunities for profitability. The Broadcom Advantage Partner Program provides a proven, simple, scalable framework for all partner routes to market . It also uses a modular approach to accommodate the unique needs of specific partner ecosystems. There is no universal threshold for resell partners to join the program, and there is no fee for any partner to join. All active VMware resellers with an active customer contract within the past 36 months have been invited into Broadcom Advantage at a tier that is equivalent to their VMware Partner Connect program tier. Partners will play an essential role in transitioning our customer base to the subscription model and helping them transform their business with our private cloud infrastructure. Our focus on simplification and standardization will bring improved market opportunities and profitability for partners. Our move to an integrated solution will help us innovate faster and meet customer needs more effectively. As not all customers are ready for VCF, our thousands of reseller partners will drive adoption of VVF. Resellers will also continue to offer vSphere Standard, which may be appropriate for small deployments. This should help reduce that channel conflict that partners have identified as an ongoing challenge. Will these changes impact industry competition? Competition is fierce and VCF will fuel more choice for customers. VMware’s direct competitors are evolving and marketing their services aggressively, and many of VMware’s historical customers are moving workloads to public cloud offerings. It is necessary for VMware to innovate faster to offer customers more value. Our VCF GTM strategy is all about simplifying and standardizing the technology stack to improve customer experience, choice, and value. All of these moves have been made with the goals of innovating faster, meeting our customers’ needs more effectively, and making it easier to do business with us. We also expect these changes to provide greater profitability and improved market opportunities for our partners. Beyond these commitments, we’ve dedicated ourselves to investing billions of dollars toward innovation and additional professional services. Read more about how we are Opening More Opportunities for VMware Cloud Service Providers . * IDC Worldwide Software Business Model (Subscription and License) Forecast, 2023–2027 By:  Mark Thomason (August 2023) (Document number: # US50123823) Topics

I've been listening to podcasts from Practical AI . and have found them...well, practical. In episode 325 (!) the hosts talk with Allegra Guinana about "Confident, strategic AI leadership". What follows is my brief summary to help you decide if you want to check it out. One of Allegra's core messages is that leaders need to stop being paralyzed by AI. In what has proven true in all technology, the key to success in AI is to focus on the people and the problems they're trying to solve. Leaders need to embed ethical considerations directly into the company culture so that it can be applied everywhere including (but not exclusively) AI. Her advice is to focus on real-world business problems over abstract experimentation .This means instead of chasing the latest LLM just because it's new, leaders should start with a clear problem and see how AI can be a tool to solve it. Again, this is nothing that successful leaders haven't already realised. Finally, Allegra highlights the growing importance of user experience and product thinking . Successful AI adoption requires usability and value for the people who interact with it every day. The best AI solution isn't the most complex, but the one that makes people's lives easier and builds trust. She reiterated that success will come from moving beyond abstract experimentation and concentrate on trying to solve tangible business challenges. Bottom line: Allegra's advice is for technology leaders to cut through the noise and complexity surrounding AI. This is something successful leaders can do to reduce AI paralysis.

Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS) is now generally available in six AWS Regions, delivering AWS scale, flexibility, performance and security to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) users. Important things to note: At GA, EVS is available in US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Dublin) and Asia Pacific (Tokyo) Amazon EVS only supports Single-AZ deployments at this time. For more information, you can review the service documentation or technical documentation read the blog and/or check out the service overview .

*This is not entirely true but it's a snappy title. Artificial Intelligence changes the entire game I don't say this lightly; to put such a statement in context and give it it's due import, anyone who knows me knows that I have a finely tuned BS detector. This is partly because I come from a culture that has its origins in a penal colony and partly because I'm becoming more curmudgeonly in my advancing age. I'm a reformed cynic but my scepticism is borne out of working for multiple IT vendors. This taught a young and naive technologist an important aspect of selling (i.e., don't confuse selling with implementing ). This time you should believe the hype Please allow me to explain why. AI happens while you're busy doing other things In recent years, and up until early 2025, I used to joke that " AI is so profound that I don't cover it ". What I meant by that is I couldn't do it justice. In reality, it masked a deeper truth that I was too lazy to keep up given everything else I had going on in my life. I was right there with Roger Murtaugh (played by Danny Glover) and his oft-repeated quotes from Lethal Weapon: "I'm too old for this sh!t" and having just "eight days to retirement" [1]. This is your wake up call I'll be honest, nothing shocked me out of my comfort zone more than Google's NotebookLM . What blew me away was the ability to upload and analyse content via a simple interface requiring zero knowledge of AI. Prior to this I'd had numerous small eureka moments (e.g., a colleague saying " just get an AI to write the PowerShell script for you " and an Australian bank explaining how the Vietnamese financial regulator needed them to reinterpret all local language contracts whenever there was a change in legislation or regulation). Some time soon after my NotebookLM moment, I realised that I couldn't rely on my career's experience to deduce what was happening. For the first time in my professional life, I didn't know how the technology was doing what it did. Sure, I'd studied neural networks and linear algebra (more on that in a moment)... ...but it was, effectively, m a g i c . As a scientist, this made me feel very uncomfortable. Back to school With time to spare — for the first time in a very long time — I " hit the books ". I took online courses that taught the nitty gritty of transformer architecture, named entity recognition, parameter efficient fine tuning, self attention, tokenisation, quantisation etc etc. And I'm just getting started. Machine-learning models are just big statistical calculators that work with numbers rather than words - Not sure ^. ^ My notes suggest it was someone in this course (but I can't find it otherwise I would attribute appropriately). In all cases, I like the statement (noting it is slightly modified for humorous purposes). If you want to know how LLMs work "under the hood", there's a lot to learn. In point of fact it took me more than 30 years to realise why my university forced me to study linear algebra (e.g., matrices, vectors). These studies helped me to deduce that current generations of AI were built on information science and statistics / probability but that was just an educated guess that might have been wrong. In some respects, I've been in the AI field since studying it at university in the early '90s. In fact, I was getting paid to use Prolog at work just a few years later. I recall learning how Japan declared the 1990s as being the "decade of AI" whilst I struggled to keep up with my team as we battled against other students (to win a game of reversi ). Ironically, the winning team trained their program to beat ours; we came second (no thanks to me). It's deja vu all over again (Sic) Fast forward to one of my stints as an IT industry analyst. I was presenting on the top trends facing Asia Pacific organisations in 2014 and beyond. I presented the same talk in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing (among other cities IIRC). Among the trends that I mentioned were the labour impacts from digitilisation and the rise of machines. In the aftermath of movements such as Occupy Wall Street , many of trends touched a nerve. Among all the content — now over a decade old — a few things stand out. Most notably, the experience of having a piece of technology beat you in your field of expertise. This [is] what it looks like when the future comes for you ... it’s not a Terminator laser eyepiece tracking you down in an alley; it’s just a line on a chart gradually but inexorably moving closer and closer to human performance — to the thing that you can do that you think makes you special. - Ken Jennings (Source: Bryant University News ) Ken has already experienced what most of us can't yet imagine. Stay tuned. We're just getting started. Notes: [1] All credit to Adam Spencer who referenced this same phrase, in this same context, in a presentation on AI in Sydney in May 2025.

Experts explain why IT teams interested in migrating from VMWare software want a future-ready IT platform that manages virtual machines and modern application needs. The full article is available here .

By Simon Sharwood Second major change in 18 months will be most unwelcome for many - as will critical flaws announced today VMware has advised partners its current channel program will end, and it seems that smaller players won’t be invited back. For more information, see the whole article here

By Simon Sharwood Despite pledging help for those who don’t sign for subs, Broadcom says validating their entitlements will delay support. Some customers of Broadcom’s VMware business are facing significant challenges. They currently cannot access essential security patches. This situation puts them at a greater risk of cyberattacks. For more information, you can read the full article here .

By Pankaj Sachdeva To keep pace with the AI boom, investors could pour $7 trillion into building data centers over the next five years. Will this effort generate enough compute capacity for organizations to meet their AI goals, while also delivering ROI to investors? If stakeholders act strategically, anticipating potential roadblocks and planning for risks, the outlook is promising. Read the whole article here