If you're reading this, you probably just opened a VMware renewal quote and did a double take. Since Broadcom closed its acquisition of VMware in November 2023, public records have documented individual renewals at approximately five times the prior amount, while other organizations and industry groups have reported still larger proposed increases. The product, licensing, and partner changes below explain why the impact can vary so widely.
The acquisition
Broadcom announced its intent to acquire VMware in May 2022 for approximately $61 billion in cash and stock, roughly $69 billion including assumed VMware debt. After 18 months of regulatory review across the US, EU, UK, and China, the deal closed on November 22, 2023.
Broadcom's playbook was well known from its prior acquisitions of CA Technologies and Symantec's enterprise business: focus on the largest, highest-margin accounts, cut costs aggressively, move everything to subscription, and accept churn at the low end. VMware customers hoped this time would be different. It wasn't.
Perpetual licenses: killed in under a month
On December 11, 2023, less than three weeks after closing, Broadcom announced the end of sale for all VMware perpetual licenses and the end of support-and-subscription (SnS) renewals for existing perpetual licenses. Customers who had budgeted around "buy once, pay ~20% a year for support" suddenly faced a hard wall: when your current support contract lapses, your only path to patches and support is a subscription.
The perpetual license itself doesn't stop working. But running production infrastructure without security patches or vendor support is a risk most compliance frameworks, and most cyber insurers, won't accept. (More on that in our End of Life Guide.)
This is the first of four changes that land together on a renewal quote. If you are holding one and trying to work out which of them drove your number, see why your VMware renewal went up.
The product line collapsed into two bundles
Pre-Broadcom, VMware sold thousands of SKUs, vSphere Standard, Enterprise Plus, vCenter, vSAN, NSX, Aria, Essentials kits, and endless à la carte add-ons. Broadcom collapsed nearly all of it into two core subscription offerings:
| Bundle | What's in it | Who it targets |
|---|---|---|
| VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) | vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, NSX, Aria/Operations, HCX, the full private-cloud stack | Large enterprises; Broadcom's strategic focus |
| VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) | vSphere, vCenter, Aria Operations, compute virtualization without NSX/vSAN entitlements at VCF scale | Mid-market customers who "just want vSphere" |
| vSphere Standard / Essentials Plus | Stripped-down vSphere tiers | Small environments; availability and terms have shifted repeatedly |
The practical effect: many organizations that licensed only vSphere and vCenter are now quoted for bundles that include products they never deployed and don't want. That bundling, not a single list-price hike, is the biggest driver of the renewal shock.
Per-core licensing and minimums
Broadcom also changed how you count. Licensing moved from per-CPU-socket to per-core, with a 16-core minimum per CPU. A modest dual-socket host with two 12-core CPUs is licensed as 32 cores, not 24. Some commercial quotes have included larger order floors, including 72 cores, but Broadcom's published core-count guidance verifies the 16-core-per-CPU rule. Require any additional floor to be identified in writing for your specific transaction. For a deeper breakdown of the mechanics, see VMware Licensing Changes Explained.
The partner purge
In early 2024, Broadcom terminated VMware's entire reseller agreement base and moved to an invitation-only partner program. Thousands of smaller resellers and cloud service providers were dropped. The VMware Cloud Services Provider (VCSP) program was cut from thousands of participants to a few hundred, with steep new minimum commitments.
For customers, that meant two things: the trusted reseller who used to negotiate on your behalf may no longer carry VMware at all, and the surviving large providers, the ones who committed to massive core counts, now hold VMware capacity at scale pricing that individual mid-market companies can't touch. That last part matters: it's why "stay on VMware through a managed provider" is often cheaper than renewing direct. See our provider directory.
What happened to prices
Broadcom maintains that list price per core is comparable to or lower than older editions. Customers' invoices tell a different story, because the change is multiplicative:
- Bundling: paying for vSAN/NSX/Aria you didn't license before
- Per-core counting: core-dense modern CPUs inflate counts vs. per-socket licensing
- Minimums: the published 16-core-per-CPU rule, plus any additional commercial order floor stated in the quote
- Lost discounts: legacy ELA discounts and partner margins evaporated
- Subscription vs. SnS: annual subscription replaces ~20–25% SnS on a sunk perpetual cost
Public records illustrate the range. The Metropolitan Water District of Salt Lake & Sandy documented a renewal increase from $30,453.04 to $158,644.72, approximately 5.2 times the prior amount. The U.S. Department of Energy reported a 400% increase for VMware supporting specified EHSS systems and documented a plan to replace it with Hyper-V. These are individual cases, not apples-to-apples benchmarks. See the full table of publicly reported VMware price increases and direct sources.
The backlash: lawsuits, regulators, and an exodus
The reaction was unusually loud for enterprise IT:
- AT&T sued Broadcom in 2024 and alleged a proposed annual VMware price increase of approximately 1,050% during the dispute. The case was later resolved, but it put Broadcom's renewal tactics in open court filings. The allegation and its source are included in the reported price-increase table.
- European cloud and user groups complained to regulators. CISPE reported aggregate member increases ranging from 800% to 1,500%; these are association-level reports from unnamed members, not a controlled pricing study. See the source and attribution notes.
- Analysts told clients to evaluate alternatives. What had been an unthinkable conversation, leaving vSphere, became a standard board-level agenda item through 2024–2026.
By mid-2026, the result is a mature migration market: Nutanix, Proxmox, Hyper-V, OpenShift Virtualization, hyperscaler VMware services, and managed VMware clouds all have established VMware-exit practices, tooling, and reference customers. We compare them all in our alternatives matrix.
Timeline of key events
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| May 2022 | Broadcom announces intent to acquire VMware (~$61B; ~$69B with debt) |
| Nov 22, 2023 | Acquisition closes after global regulatory review |
| Dec 11, 2023 | End of sale for perpetual licenses and SnS renewals announced |
| Jan–Feb 2024 | Partner program reset; thousands of resellers and CSPs dropped |
| 2024 | Product line consolidated into VCF/VVF per-core subscriptions; AT&T lawsuit; EU complaints mount |
| Apr 2, 2025 | vSphere 7.0 reaches End of General Support |
| 2025 | Larger commercial order floors appear in some quotes; renewal pressure accelerates |
| 2025–2026 | Alternative-platform adoption accelerates; managed-VMware "stay for less" market matures |
| Oct 11, 2027 | vSphere 8.0 End of General Support (the next hard deadline) |
So what are your options?
Every VMware customer in 2026 has the same four paths:
- Renew with Broadcom, simplest, most expensive. Negotiation helps at the margins; the structure doesn't change.
- Stay on VMware through a managed provider, keep vSphere and your workflows, but let a VCSP partner (11:11 Systems, Expedient, TierPoint, and others) carry the licensing at scale pricing. Often the fastest savings with the least disruption.
- Migrate to an alternative hypervisor, Nutanix AHV, Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, or OpenShift Virtualization. Bigger lift, biggest long-term savings for many. See the comparison.
- Move to hyperscaler VMware, AVS, GCVE, or VMC on AWS. Low migration effort, but rarely the cheapest path.
Which one fits depends on your VM count, renewal date, hardware age, compliance posture, and team. For a side-by-side breakdown of all four paths with cost, effort, and best-fit guidance, see our top VMware migration solutions guide. Or skip straight to numbers: our free assessment maps the realistic options for your specific environment, without a vendor pitch.