For more than a decade, VMware has been a foundational technology in IT environments across industries. From datacenter virtualization to telephone systems, surveillance, and access control, VMware has been the engine behind the hypervisor layer that makes enterprise workloads efficient and manageable.
But with Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, major changes are shaking up this ecosystem. The shifts in licensing, partner programs, and pricing will have wide-reaching consequences for SMB and midmarket organizations. At Morefield, we believe it’s critical for businesses to understand what’s happening, why it matters, and what options exist moving forward.
The Broadcom Effect: A Disrupted VMware Landscape
Broadcom has wasted no time restructuring VMware’s go-to-market model. The most visible changes include:
- Partner Program Shakeup – Broadcom has eliminated the lowest tier of the VMware Advantage Partner Program, consolidating from (4) to (3) tiers. This means fewer authorized resellers and higher costs for those who remain. To maintain authorization, partners face tougher requirements: expert services capabilities, dedicated sales & technical resources, and joint business planning with Broadcom.
- Distributor Breakup – Broadcom severed ties with Ingram Micro, one of the largest IT distributors worldwide. This move impacts 1,500 resellers who collectively supported over 160,000 customers.
- Licensing Model Overhaul – Perpetual licenses are being retired in favor of subscription-based models. While subscription can bring flexibility, many customers are experiencing higher ongoing costs compared to their prior perpetual investments.
- Rising Prices – VMware licensing fees are going up, adding new strain on IT budgets.
- License Portability – Broadcom has introduced a License Portability entitlement for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). This feature empowers customers to deploy and run workloads more flexibly across environments, but it comes with complexity and cost.
Taken together, these changes create disruption for organizations that have long relied on VMware as a stable, predictable hypervisor.
An Overreliance on Hypervisors: How We Got Here
To understand why Broadcom’s changes matter so much, it helps to look back at how hypervisors became so deeply embedded in enterprise IT.
In the early days of client-server computing, application vendors demanded dedicated compute, memory, and storage to ensure consistent performance. Without hypervisors, IT leaders had only one choice: dedicate an entire physical server, operating system, and storage stack to each application.
The result? Datacenters filled with racks of underutilized servers, each running a single workload.
Then came hypervisors. With virtualization, IT teams could configure virtual images that mimicked dedicated environments but consolidated them onto fewer physical servers. The efficiency gains were enormous: fewer boxes to buy, power, cool, and manage, with the flexibility to scale resources as needed.
This virtualization strategy was so successful that it spread everywhere:
- File storage | domain controller | print server
- Line-of-business applications
- Voice and telephone systems
- Building Management such as surveillance & access control
Today, hypervisors like VMware are not just part of the IT stack—they are the IT stack for many organizations. That deep reliance is what makes Broadcom’s changes so disruptive.
Morefield: Losing VMware Resale Authorization, Retaining Expertise
Morefield has designed, installed, and supported VMware environments since 2012. For more than 13 years, our technical expertise has helped businesses build reliable, secure, and high-performing datacenters.
But with Broadcom’s new partner program requirements and the elimination of lower-tier partnerships, Morefield will no longer maintain resale authorization for VMware.
Here’s what that means for our clients:
Support Continues – Our team’s VMware expertise is unchanged. We will continue to support VMware environments for our managed services clients and those running on-premises datacenters.
Collaboration with Premier Partners – Through partnerships with authorized resellers at higher tiers, we can still acquire VMware maintenance and support for our clients.
Client Commitment – Our focus remains steady: to deliver the best possible support, guidance, and solutions for our clients—even as the vendor landscape shifts.
Walking Away from VMware: Options You Should Consider
As organizations assess their VMware environments, many will be forced to decide whether to stay the course or explore alternatives. Here are (4) strategic paths to consider:
- Stay the Course with your private Datacenter
Businesses may choose to remain with VMware, but it’s essential to evaluate total costs. Beyond licensing, factor in the lifecycle of compute and storage hardware, extended warranties, and the long-term sustainability of VMware as a platform under Broadcom’s stewardship.
If a revirtualization project is on the horizon, consider bundling it with new datacenter hardware to maximize ROI and simplify the project, allowing for image migrations, one at a time. New hardware hosts the new hypervisor whilst the VMware environment remains on existing hardware. This approach also ensures backup routines continue in parallel and business continuity plans are not impacted.
- Explore Hosted Infrastructure (IaaS)
Migrating workloads to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides relief from hardware lifecycle management. Morefield has partnered with datacenter operators such as TierPoint, Expedient, and 11:11 Systems to help clients successfully shift workloads to hosted environments.
This approach often reduces capital expenditures for hardware refresh, shifts management responsibility of the environment to the Operator and provides scalable, consumption-based pricing.
- Devirtualize Smaller Environments
For smaller, converged environments, devirtualization may be a viable option. This involves migrating applications from a hypervisor host back to a physical server environment. With dedicated hardware, operating systems, and management tools, devirtualization can simplify operations and reduce licensing costs.
- Migrate to SaaS Solutions
With the dominance of subscription models today, many application vendors now offer Software as a Service (SaaS) alternatives. Instead of managing licenses, servers, and infrastructure, organizations can subscribe to SaaS offerings that deliver applications directly over the cloud.
This is particularly effective for line-of-business applications where vendors are investing heavily in cloud-native experiences.
Why These Decisions Matter
VMware’s dominance in the hypervisor market means these changes won’t just affect large enterprises—they will impact SMB and midmarket organizations across industries.
Here’s why:
Market Impact – VMware has the largest share of hypervisor deployments. Industry analysts project that more than one-third of VMware workloads will migrate to alternate technologies by 2028.
Licensing Risks – Many older VMware licenses were perpetual. Without active support or upgrades, these environments risk falling behind, leaving organizations exposed to vulnerabilities and compliance gaps.
Critical Applications Depend on VMware – From premise telephone systems to building management (HVAC, surveillance, access control), many non-IT systems were built on VMware. As these environments age without updates, the risk of cyberattacks grows.
Financial Strain – The combination of rising VMware prices and hardware refresh cycles creates real budgetary challenges for leadership teams.
Simply put VMware is no longer the straightforward, value driven investment it once was. Businesses must reevaluate their strategies now to avoid being caught off guard later.
Morefield as Your Expert Datacenter Partner
At Morefield, we see this moment as both a challenge and an opportunity. Our team combines more than a decade of hypervisor experience with broad expertise across datacenter, cloud, and SaaS solutions. Whether you choose to maintain VMware, shift to hosted infrastructure, devirtualize, or embrace SaaS, we can guide you every step of the way.
The VMware landscape may be changing, but your business doesn’t have to navigate it alone.
If your organization is evaluating the future of its VMware environment, contact Morefield today. Let’s assess your options, build a roadmap, and ensure your technology investments continue to deliver value—no matter where Broadcom takes VMware.