Broadcom bolstered its VMware vSphere hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform with more storage and brought back an old name for a new option that could help bridge the gap for users stung by Broadcom’s far-reaching changes to VMware’s product offerings that are strongly focused on its halo VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

The first update has Broadcom more than doubling the amount of vSAN capacity for the VMware vSphere Foundation product to 250 gigabytes per core. The vSAN product is VMware’s software-defined storage (SDS) platform that can be integrated into the vSphere platform.

Prashanth Shenoy, VP of cloud platform, infrastructure, and solutions marketing at Broadcom, during a press briefing said this move “truly makes it an enterprise class HCI platform for our customers.”

Broadcom also brought back the vSphere Enterprise Plus name as a new option for its vSphere Standard product. Broadcom had previously ditched the vSphere Enterprise Plus name when it consolidated its vSphere offerings to just Standard and Foundation following the close of its VMware acquisition.

Broadcom’s vSphere continue to sits below its halo VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) product, with Shenoy previously noting that vSphere was targeted at “the broader mid-tier, small data centers that just want to virtualize compute infrastructure with some good operations to manage that infrastructure.”

“We have provided a wide variety of offering for customers of various sizes and where they are in the journey,” Shenoy said of the new layered approach. “If they want a full private cloud platform, they go with VMware Cloud Foundation. If they want an enterprise-class HCI hyperconverged infrastructure platform they can go with vSphere Foundation. Or if they just want to start with compute virtualization they can go with vSphere Enterprise Plus or vSphere Standard.”

Shenoy did repeatedly tout Broadcom’s VCF platform as being its flagship product, with a focus on providing a full breadth of support for on-premises deployments. That notion has been echoed by CEO Hock Tan, who has admitted that Broadcom wants to entice its vSphere customers to upgrade to its VCF platform.

Is Broadcom listening to VMware customer demands? Broadcom tied the latest vSphere product moves to customer demands. Shenoy re-iterated past comments about the velocity of Broadcom’s changes to VMware’s licensing and platforms but added that the latest moves show it’s willing to adjust.

“We continue to listen to our customers and partners and make sure that VMware Cloud Foundation serves and provides value and flexibility and choice for customers of all sizes, no matter where they are in their journey of cloud transformation,” Shenoy said of the changes.

That attentiveness could be critical to Broadcom maintaining positive sentiment from its customers, many of whom are suffering through sticker shock following Broadcom’s revamping of VMware’s licensing and platform changes.

Gartner in its recent ranking of distributed hybrid infrastructure (DHI) providers tagged Broadcom as a segment leader, but noted that the VMware integration efforts were causing market chaos. Gartner noted that Broadcom’s licensing and platform changes will result in half of enterprises over the next couple of years initiating “proofs of concept for alternative distributed hybrid infrastructure products to replace their VMware-based deployments and embrace hybrid cloud infrastructure delivery, up from 10% in 2024.”

That upheaval could see tens-of-thousands of VMware customers leave Broadcom.

Equity research firm William Blair in a recent report looking at VMware rival Nutanix mentioned market research firms were predicting up to 30% of VMware’s installed base of more than 400,000 customers “will eventually switch away from VMware.”

However, William Blair further noted that conversations with management at Broadcom rival Nutanix showed that opportunity could still be years away. This was due to VMware customers re-upping on multi-year deals prior to the Broadcom deal closing; needing to align on an enterprise’s hardware refresh cycle; how aggressive Broadcom might be in retaining the customer; and the desire by VMware customers to learn a new set of tools should they switch.

Broadcom has also shown pricing flexibility with some of VMware larger customers.

“For their largest customers, Broadcom is going to try to be more flexible because they don’t want to lose those customers,” Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami said during a recent press question-and-answer session following that vendor’s latest earnings release. “Customers are generally not happy with the pricing, the approach of Broadcom has taken. It’s not a customer’s first mindset. I’d say it’s a Broadcom-first mindset. That’s really what’s triggering a lot of the angst among customers, and that’s why they’re coming to us and we are engaged with a lot of them.”

Despite the drama, Broadcom’s Tan noted during the vendor’s second-quarter earnings call earlier this year that it had signed up nearly 3,000 of its 10,000 largest customers to VMware’s new subscription licensing model. He added that “each of these customers typically sign up to a multi-year contract,” which when spread across an annualized booking value increased from $1.2 billion during the first quarter of this year to $1.9 billion in its latest Q2.

“We’re making good progress,” Tan said of its move to sign legacy VMware customers to the new licensing model. “The journey is not over, by any means, but it’s very much to expectation moving to subscription.”