Broadcom is stopping sales of its standalone VMware Telco Cloud Platform licensing SKU, driving integrations of its telecom management offering into its VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform, a move that mimics the vendor’s ongoing focus on VMware’s halo VCF offering.

The vendor explained that the legacy Telco Cloud Platform standalone SKU reached “end of availability” on November 2, with new platform purchases being part of a VCF license and subsequent agreement parameters. The platform’s inherent capabilities will continue through the new SKU and VCF update cadence.

Current Telco Cloud Platform customers will continue to receive support per their original agreement but will have to sign up for the new offering once that original term ends.

“By delivering these capabilities through VCF, telcos get a platform that scales from IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) and 4G virtualized workloads to cloud-native 5G services to AI-native workloads. The work continues,” Broadcom wrote in a blog post. “The capabilities keep growing with every release, and the path to a simpler, more agile telco cloud is clearer than ever.”

Broadcom's move comes as rivals continue to bolster their telecom-focused support efforts. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) recently worked with Ericsson to validate a dual-mode 5G Core deployment model, while Red Hat – who is part of that HPE-Ericsson work – has been bolstering its OpenShift platform to better support telecom use cases.

Broadcom’s bold VMware licensing changes

Broadcom's Telco Cloud Platform change continues its contentious tightening of legacy VMware licensing options.

VMware’s telecom cloud efforts initially sprang from its long-standing Project Maestro initiative, forming an initial commercial product in early 2020, before gaining its formal name later that year. The platform was developed to provide telecom operators with an abstraction layer that could run across multiple network domains, allowing those operators to tap into hyperscale public cloud capacity while maintaining core control points.

The offering garnered early momentum, with operators worldwide signing on to use the platform and that platform in turn garnering broader industry integration. However, the platform seemed to lose momentum following Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, which included Broadcom attempting to enforce new licensing arrangements on existing VCF-using telecom operators.

The most notable were a long-standing support fight with AT&T, which claimed to have approximately 8,600 AT&T servers that are powering more than 75,000 virtual machines (VMs) in their VMware environment; similar claims from T-Mobile US; and a more direct VMware Telco Cloud Platform hit when Boost Mobile ditched its long-standing use of that platform due to what its CTO said was due to “price gouging.”

VMware earlier this year did update the platform as part of its broader VCP 9 launch. That update included new revenue-generating systems that Broadcom noted would help operators cut total cost of ownership. Broadcom also recently garnered a long-term VCF contract extension from Japanese telecom giant NTT DoCoMo.