VMware by Broadcom offers a lifeline to small cloud service providers

VMware by Broadcom appears to have made concessions to some of the cloud service providers it has previously indicated it will spurn.

Pre-acquisition VMware ran a Cloud Services Provider (VCSP) program that saw some partners offer various VMware applications as cloudy managed services, plus a VMware Cloud Providers Program (VCPP) that saw channel orgs operate public clouds based on the Cloud Foundation hybrid cloud stack that Broadcom has made its hero product.

Not long after acquiring VMware, Broadcom ended the VCSP program. Participants were told they may be invited to Broadcom’s own Advantage Partner Program, with a requirement to license at least 3,500 cores.

That’s way more than many small VMware—powered clouds have in production. And if those operators were not allowed into Broadcom’s program, they would not even be able to acquire VMware licenses.

It is understood hundreds of VCSP and VCPP members were not invited to join Broadcom’s Advantage Program. We’re told many faced the prospect of not being able to continue offering VMware-powered services – meaning their clients could be forced to make a risky, costly and decidedly unwelcome move to a new cloud provider that had managed to keep its place in Broadcom’s partner program.

Former VCSP partners would then find themselves with hardware they had acquired – and assumed they could amortize over many years – but without the VMware software for which their customers had signed up.

It has been reported that smaller cloud operators despaired at this situation, and that it has dawned on Broadcom that it was creating a moment in which customers of those small clouds would be forced to consider their future as VMware users.

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