24th January, 2024

VMware Streamlines Portfolio: VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation Lead the Charge

December 12, 2023: Marking a significant shift in its strategy, VMware announced a major portfolio simplification effort on December 11th, 2023. This move, spanning the past two years, focuses on streamlining offerings, transitioning to a subscription model, and empowering customers with a clearer path forward.

The Two Pillars: VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation

At the heart of the new streamlined portfolio are two new core offerings:

• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF): Designed for customers seeking the full-stack infrastructure experience, VCF bundles vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and the complete Aria management and orchestration suite, including new services.

• VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF): Optimizing traditional vSphere environments, VVF includes Tanzu Kubernetes Grid alongside Aria Operations and Aria Operations for Logs as standard features. For smaller deployments, vSphere Standard and vSphere Essentials Plus Kit subscriptions remain available.

Optional Advanced Add-Ons Elevate Capabilities

Both VCF and VVF benefit from optional add-on services catering to specific use cases like storage, security, disaster recovery, and Generative AI. These offerings enhance the customer journey and unlock further value from VMware investments.

Simplifying for Value and Innovation

VMware emphasizes that this portfolio simplification allows customers to:

• Extract more value from their VMware investments.

• Benefit from faster innovation: with streamlined offerings, VMware can accelerate the delivery of new features and functionalities.

• Experience easier deployment and management: both for themselves and for VMware support teams.

"Bring Your Own License" Flexibility

VMware by Broadcom plans to introduce "Bring Your Own License" capabilities, allowing customers to purchase VCF subscriptions and deploy them flexibly across VMware-validated hybrid cloud endpoints and their own on-premises data centers.

End of Availability for Older Products

As a consequence of this transition, several products are now at the End of Availability (EOA) as standalone offerings. However, some may still be available within VCF or VVF bundles. Furthermore, Aria SaaS services are also reaching EOA but will continue to be supported for existing customers until their subscription term ends. After that, transitioning to VCF or VVF is required.

For more details  refer to  the VMware blog :  VMware End Of Availability of Perpetual Licensing and SaaS Services