“Broadcom has built all the bridges. It may be relatively easy to move to the new offering, but the standard vSphere release has been associated with vSphere 8 and has already been presented to customers and channel partners. They have proven to be unreliable partners,” he told Ars Technica.
Similar concerns about trust have emerged in online discussions about VMware’s announcement.
“Too little, too late. We’ve moved on,” wrote a Reddit user named bakonpie in a comment about the company’s future updates.
Broadcom’s renewed interest in smaller customers comes as VMware competitors actively target dissatisfied users, particularly small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
“The updated vSphere Standard offering suggests that Broadcom is listening to the market. However, three years of neglect, rejected quotes, and VCF-only sales strategies have already pushed many small businesses toward Nutanix, Proxmox, and Microsoft Hyper-V,” said Sumit Bhatia, co-author of Navigating the VMware Mess of the Broadcom Era, in an interview with Ars Technica.
“The real deficit is trust, not features. Broadcom must demonstrate a long-term commitment through stable pricing, reliable updates, and meaningful investment before SMBs view vSphere Standard as a dependable option again,” Bhatia added.
For vSphere Standard to regain traction, customers will likely expect predictable, publicly available pricing without unexpected increases, along with genuine term-based or perpetual-style licensing options. Essential capabilities such as vMotion, vSphere High Availability, and backup integration should also be available without additional upsell requirements.
“Broadcom should simplify licensing by moving away from the per-core minimums designed for hyperscale environments,” Bhatia said. “A straightforward per-socket licensing model would be more practical for many SMB customers.”
“VMware’s biggest challenge is convincing a burned-out market that Broadcom will not repeat the bait-and-switch once customers are locked in by switching costs,” he added.
It remains unclear how strategically important SMB customers are to Broadcom’s broader business goals. The company’s software division has continued to grow since its acquisition of VMware, generating $8.75 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2026, a 29 percent increase year over year.
Even so, making vSphere Standard more affordable and accessible could be important for VMware’s future. Some SMBs may prefer to remain with VMware rather than spend the time and money required to evaluate migration options and move workloads to an alternative virtualization platform.
Source: arstechnica.com