Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) expanded the range and reach of its private cloud management offerings, bolstering a growing push by vendors in targeting disgruntled VMware customers.

The updates revolve around HPE’s Morpheus VM Essentials platform that was unveiled late last year. That platform taps HPE’s acquisition of Morpheus Data and provides a platform for managing virtual machines (VMs) deployed across HPE’s VM Essentials KVM-based hypervisor and VMware hypervisors.

The first update bundles that package into HPE’s Private Cloud Business Edition offering. This combination is touted as slashing the cost of VM license costs by up to 90 percent and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO).

The second makes Morpheus VM Essentials available as a standalone offering under the broader Morpheus Software family and alongside the Morpheus Enterprise Software cloud management offering. Both include HPE’s HVM hypervisor and are licensed on a per-socket basis, with those selecting the Essentials package being provided a smooth ramp in upgrading to the full Enterprise system if needed.

Both offerings have been validated to run on Dell Technologies’ PowerEdge servers, NetApp’s AFF arrays, and HPE’s own ProLiant Compute Gen11 and Gen12 servers.

HPE also touted performance gains and cost savings by combining VM Essentials with aspects of its HPE Aruba Networking platform, a combination that will be available later this year. HPE last month updated Aruba with new deployment options, deeper observability, and a greater reach.

Everyone targeting VMware customers

The HPE updates are squarely aimed at a fractured private cloud ecosystem reeling from Broadcom’s revamping of its VMware operations. HPE CEO Antonio Neri noted during an investor conference last year that the vendor’s VM management platform “gives an alternative to the VMware stuff, but at the same time it allows you to manage the VMware stack and other stacks.”

HPE is not the only vendor targeting disgruntled VMware customers.

Red Hat earlier this year unveiled its OpenShift Virtualization Engine to help enterprises manage VMs using the IBM’s subsidiary’s OpenShift environment. That launch furthered comments from IBM executives stating plans to pounce on Broadcom’s changes to VMware.

“What it's forcing right now with the Broadcom acquisition is it's forcing every enterprise client to make platform architecture decisions, and that's going to be between virtualization and containerization,” IBM CFO James Kavanaugh said during an analyst conference last year, touting IBM’s consulting services, its Watson X generative artificial intelligence (genAI) platform, and Red Hat OpenShift. “That's why clients are coming to us with extreme interest around a growth factor that I think will play out for multiple years, and we're excited about that.”

Nutanix is also a noted opportunist, having bolstered its platform and partnerships in an attempt to steal VMware customers.

Nutanix CEO Rajiv Ramaswami during a press interview session after it released its most recent earnings said the vendor added “roughly about 700 customers in this quarter,” and that “the vast majority of them are probably VMware customers.” The executive added that these are customers are “largely moving away from those legacy VMware stacks.”

That result built on the 630 new customers Nutanix added during the previous quarter.

Despite those efforts, Broadcom appears comfortable with its VMware management.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan told investors during the vendor’s latest earnings call that 70 percent of its largest 10,000 customers have now adopted its halo VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform. That was considerable progress from the 4,500 large customers Tan said had signed on for the VCF platform at the end of the previous quarter.

HPE’s latest Broadcom broadside comes as it’s fighting its own battles. HPE is currently in the process of acquiring Juniper Networks for $14 billion in a push to bolster its AI and networking portfolio, but that deal is being challenged by the Department of Justice (DOJ). That case is set to be argued in front of judge next month.