Broadcom CEO Hock Tan continued his blog-based attempt at clarifying the myriad of changes his firm has implemented across its recently acquired VMware operations, with the latest attempt pointing toward three specific ways the changes are targeted at customer concerns and the executive providing small concessions targeted at fighting ongoing confusion.

Tan’s first point was to reinforce Broadcom’s move in streamlining VMware’s product portfolio and increase the focus on the reconfigured VMware Cloud Platform (VCP) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) offerings. Tan explained this was done to “increase competition with the public cloud and promote customer adoption.”

“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-premises] data centers and supported cloud providers,” Tan wrote. “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.”

Registered partners gain time

Those changes also included Broadcom reconfiguring VMware’s long-standing partner program under its new VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, which Tan wrote was made to “deliver consistent customer experiences.”

This alteration has involved Broadcom changing how customers can move their data between an on-premises data center and a hyperscaler environment. This includes a change to per-core licensing of VCF that removes pricing uncertainty around data moved between different hyperscaler environments and standardizing the VCF technology stack to ease data movement.

Tan pointed to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) being the first hyperscaler to support this new move and that “we expect other partner and hyperscaler clouds to follow with similar support.”

The Broadcom exec also again touted recent changes to VMware’s legacy Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) that now operates as the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program. This program now includes three tiers – Pinnacle Partners, Premier Partners and Registered Partners – with that last tier really just an avenue for smaller partners to work with partners in the higher tier.

However, former small partners have expressed frustration in attempting to gain approval for this final tier, which has also impacted their operations. Tan did make a concession to that frustration in his latest post.

“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,” Tan wrote.

Broadcom throws VMware perpetual license model a bone

Tan for his third point went back to pricing model changes, which he wrote has simplified pricing for users and ended “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.”

The move has sowed confusion among legacy VMware perpetual license users over how they will be treated going forward.

Tan wrote that those users can continue to use their VMware services based on those legacy license models, but will not have access to ongoing maintenance and support of those services unless they move to a subscription license. But, Broadcom will offer “free access to zero-day security patches for supported versions of vSphere, and we’ll add other VMware products over time.”

“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,” Tan wrote. “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.”

Broadcom’s ongoing VMware messaging

Tan’s latest blog missive comes just a few weeks after he celebrated the first 100-days of VMware ownership. That post also included attempts toward satiating customer concerns over Broadcom’s radical revamping of VMware’s operations.

Prashanth Shenoy, VP of cloud platform, infrastructure and solutions marketing at VMware, recently told SDxCentral that the past several months have indeed been a sometimes painful whirlwind both for VMware internally and for its customers. This has included a complete overhaul of VMware’s operational model, platform offerings and its focus going forward.

“With change comes challenges in terms of confusion, because when the pace of change and the amount of change is drastic, there’s obviously a definite confusion or challenge when we don’t communicate and articulate things in a broad amplified and consistent manner,” Shenoy admitted.

However, he added that these changes were necessary and a long-time coming.

“In the previous world, this would have taken us three to four years to make that change,” Shenoy said. “I joined VMware two years back and we tried this a few times, and we didn’t execute on that. So, for me, I was very glad to have made this business model transformation, portfolio transformation, route market transformation, all in a matter of months.”