Broadcom is taking over distribution of its VMware Cloud product running on Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the latest shake up of its new subsidiary’s distribution strategy.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan highlighted the move in a blog post, explaining that VMware Cloud on AWS “is no longer directly sold by AWS or its channel partners.”

“It’s that simple,” Tan wrote. “What this means is that customers who previously purchased VMware Cloud on AWS from AWS will now work with Broadcom or an authorized Broadcom reseller to renew their subscriptions and expand their environments. Customers who have active one- or three-year subscriptions with monthly payments that were purchased from AWS will continue to be invoiced by AWS until the end of their term.”

VMware initially unveiled its AWS support in 2016. It’s built on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) – an integrated software stack with compute (vSphere), storage (vSAN) and network virtualization (NV) (NSX) that can be deployed on-premises as a private cloud or in public clouds.

The AWS iteration has been a critical success for VMware.

“VMware Cloud on AWS has transformed the industry by providing a reliable solution to move enterprise VMware workloads onto the public cloud without the expensive, time-consuming and unpredictable refactoring and migrations that come with native public cloud services,” Tan wrote.

VMware has similar variants running on Microsoft Azure, which the hyperscaler last week boosted with incentives in order to help migrations, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Tan’s latest missive was prompted by what he claims were erroneous reports that the VMware Cloud on AWS product was on the chopping block.

“Unfortunately, there have been false reports that VMware Cloud on AWS may be going away, which is causing unnecessary concern for our loyal customers who have used the service for years,” Tan wrote. “We are acting quickly to correct this misinformation. … I’m pleased to report the service is alive, available and continues to support our customers' strategic business initiatives just as it always has.”

The VMware Cloud on AWS distribution change is the latest Broadcom move to change VMware’s legacy operations.

Broadcom shortly after it closed on the acquisition streamlined VMware’s product portfolio with an increased focus on the reconfigured VMware Cloud Platform (virtual private cloud (VCP)) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) offerings. Tan explained this was done to “increase competition with the public cloud and promote customer adoption.”

VMware’s legacy perpetual pricing model was also chopped and replaced with a subscription model used by Broadcom. Tan recently noted this move provides a more 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.”

Broadcom also cited a push toward easing customer confusion by reconfiguring VMware’s long-standing partner program under its new VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, which Tan explained was made to “deliver consistent customer experiences.”

This alteration involved Broadcom changing how customers can move their data between an on-premises data center and a hyperscaler environment. This included a change to per-core licensing of VCF that removed pricing uncertainty around data moved between different hyperscaler environments and standardized the VCF technology stack to ease data movement. Google Cloud was the first hyperscaler to support the move.

Broadcom’s rash of VMware changes has caused some consternation from long-time VMware customers and distribution partners.

“I just talked to a client that wasn’t really impacted by the new partner program because it uses a partner that was accepted into the new program, but they are really worried about everything that is going on,” Tracy Woo, principal analyst at Forrester Research, told SDxCentral. “And that call was about how to create a business case to tell to their executives as to why they should be moving off of VMware and also they needed a list of alternatives.”

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.”