The end of VMware perpetual licences.

What Broadcom withdrew.

Broadcom ended the sale of new VMware perpetual licences in 2024, completing the transition to a subscription-only catalogue begun immediately after the acquisition closed in November 2023. There is no longer a perpetual purchasing option for vSphere, vSAN, NSX or any other VMware product; the only way to acquire new VMware entitlement is a term subscription. Admodum is an independent, buyer-side software licensing advisory, and this page sets out the consequences of that withdrawal for organisations that built their estate on perpetual licences.

A perpetual licence is a one-time purchase that confers a permanent right to run the software. Historically a VMware buyer paid the licence cost once, capitalised it, and then paid an annual Support and Subscription (SnS) fee — typically around a fifth of licence value — for updates and technical support. A subscription reverses this: the buyer pays a recurring term fee for the right to run the software at all, with support and updates bundled in, and the right to run ends when payment stops. The wider model sits in the pillar at Broadcom VMware licensing: VCF, VVF and per-core subscription.

What happens to existing perpetual licences.

A perpetual licence bought before the change does not expire. The permanent right to run the software remains, and an organisation can continue operating its existing VMware estate on perpetual entitlement for as long as it chooses. The withdrawal of perpetual sales does not retroactively revoke licences already owned.

What changes is support and updates. Broadcom no longer sells standalone support renewals for perpetual licences, so once an organisation's existing SnS contract lapses, it cannot be renewed in the old form. The estate keeps running, but it stops receiving patches, security updates and vendor support. For a stable, isolated workload this may be tolerable for a period; for an internet-facing or compliance-bound estate, running without security updates becomes an accumulating risk that most organisations will not accept for long.

The distinction matters for negotiation because it removes a false binary. The renewal conversation is often framed as a choice between subscribing now or losing VMware altogether, but that is not the position: an organisation owns its perpetual licences and can keep them running while it evaluates alternatives. The real deadline is the SnS expiry, after which the estate runs unpatched, not the loss of the right to run. Reading that timeline correctly converts a renewal under pressure into a planned decision, and gives the buyer the time needed to build a credible alternative before committing to a subscription.

Why the recurring cost jumps.

The cost increase that dominates buyer conversations is structural, not merely a price rise. It follows directly from the difference between renewing support and renewing a licence.

Under the perpetual model, an organisation that had already bought its licences was, at each renewal, paying only the SnS fee — commonly around twenty per cent of licence value per year — to keep support and updates current. The licence asset itself was already owned and required no further payment. Under subscription, there is no owned asset; the buyer pays for the right to run the licence in full, every term. The recurring annual figure therefore steps up from roughly a fifth of licence value to the equivalent of the full licence value, a multiple before any other change is considered.

That multiple then compounds with the two other Broadcom changes: the per-core subscription with its 16-core-per-CPU minimum, and bundle consolidation into VCF or VVF. The combined effect is the two-to-five-times increase widely reported. The per-core arithmetic is set out at the 16-core-per-CPU subscription minimum, and the bundle decision at VMware Cloud Foundation versus vSphere Foundation.

The options open to buyers.

An organisation facing the end of perpetual licensing has three realistic routes, and most combine them rather than choosing one in isolation.

The first is to continue running existing perpetual licences without support. This defers cost entirely but accepts a growing security and compatibility exposure, and is generally only defensible for isolated or short-lived workloads with a planned end date. The second is to migrate to an alternative platform — Nutanix, Microsoft Hyper-V, Proxmox, or a public-cloud target — accepting migration cost and effort in exchange for escaping the subscription. The alternatives and their trade-offs are examined at VMware alternatives: Nutanix, Hyper-V, Proxmox and cloud. The third is to negotiate the subscription: right-sizing the bundle, consolidating hardware to reduce the billed core count, and negotiating term length and discount.

In practice the strongest position combines a credible migration plan with negotiation, because a documented alternative is the single largest source of leverage in a Broadcom renewal. The negotiation choreography sits at the VMware renewal negotiation playbook, and the case for leaving at VMware exit and renegotiation strategy.

A common error is to treat the three options as mutually exclusive and to decide too early. The estate rarely needs to move as a single block: a portion can migrate to an alternative platform, a portion can subscribe where the workload genuinely depends on VMware-specific features, and a portion can run on existing perpetual licences while its replacement is built. Segmenting the estate this way both lowers the subscription footprint that must be renewed and strengthens the negotiation, because it demonstrates to the vendor that the buyer has measured, costed alternatives rather than an abstract threat to leave.

What the buyer should do now.

The first move is to establish the facts that every subsequent decision depends on: what is owned, when support lapses, and what the estate actually runs.

Catalogue the existing perpetual entitlements and the expiry date of each SnS contract, because that date is the deadline against which any decision must be made. Build a verified inventory of physical cores per host so the subscription quote can be checked rather than accepted. Map which VMware products the estate genuinely uses, so the bundle can be right-sized. With those three facts in hand, model the subscription cost, the migration cost and the cost of running unsupported, and decide on evidence rather than under renewal pressure. The wider engagement sits at the Broadcom / VMware practice, the aggregated reading at the Broadcom knowledge hub and the cluster index at the Broadcom and VMware hub; a renewal moment routes to the Renewal Programme and engagement opens at contact.