European cloud firm OVHcloud has launched a VMware solution, offering the vendor’s flagship Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform as a service, specifically targeting smaller firms – a move that comes just days after Broadcom’s CEO expressed uncertainty over whether to focus on smaller enterprises.

OVHcloud introduced Public VCF as-a-Service, citing a "context of change and uncertainties" as motivation for launching a managed VMware solution.

The vendor is offering VCF access from €299 ($349) a month to provide businesses with a potentially more cost-effective alternative to the revamped VMware subscription license.

Yaniv Fdida, OVHcloud’s chief product and technology officer, said its VMware solution is “designed to protect the investments of our long-standing VMware customers, while providing new customers with a powerful platform to build, scale, and modernize their workloads.”

Broadcom's acquisition of VMware and its subsequent shift to a subscription-only model have created difficulties for numerous smaller businesses. The discontinuation of perpetual license sales has forced customers into bundled subscriptions, often requiring them to purchase features they do not need.

With its VMware offering, however, OVHcloud is looking to provide businesses with access to “only the necessary components, without the complexity of the full VMware suite.”

The service provides users access to tools like pre-configured images to ease deployment and a managed backup solution powered by Veeam. Built on VMware Cloud Director (VCD), the service starts with a pack of 16 vCPU and 64 GB of RAM, with users able to allocate resources between virtual machines and scale capacity as needed.

OVHcloud’s VMware offering is its second service designed to address specific business needs, after it launched a sovereign infrastructure solution, developed with Norwegian cloud provider Crayon. The pair aimed to capitalize on increasing demand for cloud sovereignty, mirroring moves by Microsoft and AWS, who both introduced EU-only entities to alleviate regional data concerns.

Broadcom uncertainty over value in smaller customers

The launch of OVHcloud’s VMware offering comes hot on the heels of the latter’s recent Explore event, where Broadcom CEO Hock Tan proudly proclaimed that more than 90% of VMware’s 10,000 largest customers have signed up for its VCF platform and its accompanying subscription licensing plan.

While conversion efforts have initially focused on larger players, Tan suggested that smaller firms were more apprehensive following the changes, with two driving factors potentially behind why the firm does not expect as much success with smaller customers.

“One is the value, the TCO [total cost of ownership] as they call it, that comes from [VCF] will be much less, but more importantly is the skill sets that’s needed to not just deploy – that they can get, services and ourselves that can help them – but to keep operating might not be something that they can take on,” Tan said during the recent event. “This is an area we’re still learning and be interesting to see.”

Explore ‘25 was an effective VCF showcase, with offerings like Tanzu, Broadcom’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering, taking a notable backseat.

Purnima Padmanabhan, VP and GM of Broadcom’s Tanzu Division, told SDxCentral, however, that the reason was all part of the company’s plan, adding: “This show is the VCF show, and Hock’s theory is if he doesn’t win the private cloud, all the castles we build on top of private cloud will come crashing down.”