Broadcom’s VMware has introduced VMware vSphere Express, a stripped-down virtualization product aimed at small and midsize businesses that need core hypervisor features without the cost and complexity of the company’s flagship private cloud bundle. The announcement marks an attempt to repair relationships with lower-end customers who have felt pushed aside since Broadcom acquired VMware.
A Simpler Option for Smaller Deployments
vSphere Express is designed for organizations seeking what VMware describes as cost-effective essential virtualization. It includes foundational capabilities such as vMotion for live migration of running virtual machines, with the company promising improved migration speed and efficiency, as well as high availability for automated restart of failed VMs.
The product is sold as a per-core subscription. VMware has not publicly disclosed a price, but it says the cost will be significantly lower than its VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) bundles. IT distributor TD Synnex lists vSphere Express at $9,600 per year for up to 128 cores. That price does not decrease for customers running on fewer cores, which could remain a hurdle for the smallest deployments.
Limited Management, Regular Updates
vSphere Express supports only discrete instances, meaning organizations cannot manage them centrally, according to Prashanth Shenoy, vice president of product marketing for VCF. The trade-off is a simpler product that VMware says will receive updates as frequently as VCF and VVF, unlike vSphere Standard, the prior entry-level offering that had not seen a meaningful update in years.
Some SMB customers had reported that VMware sales representatives told them vSphere Standard was no longer available, contributing to frustration with the vendor’s direction.
A Course Correction After Broadcom's Enterprise Focus
Since Broadcom’s takeover, VMware has concentrated on large enterprise accounts, reduced its channel partner network, consolidated its product lineup into a few expensive SKUs, and abandoned plans to take its biggest clients direct. While that strategy has been financially successful, vSphere Express suggests Broadcom may be concerned about losing smaller customers and that its changes are prompting organizations of all sizes to evaluate alternatives.
In September, Paul Turner, VCF’s chief product officer, acknowledged that Broadcom’s sales incentives had pushed its team to sell VCF and that VMware had focused too heavily on that bundle. Shenoy said the company began listening to lower-end customers who wanted core virtualization without VVF.
Winning Back Trust Is Another Matter
For SMBs with limited resources, migrating to a different virtualization platform can be costly and time-consuming. vSphere Express offers a simpler path than a full platform change for those unable to take on a migration project right now.
But some customers have already moved on. Thousands of firms have migrated to VMware rivals, and others have seen their preferred resellers drop VMware. A Reddit user responding to details about vSphere Express last week said Broadcom had lost all credibility and that their organization was finishing migrations at two more locations. Dean Colpitts, chief technology officer at Canadian managed services provider Members IT Group and a former VMware partner, told Ars Technica in September that even if moving to the new low-end offering is easy, Broadcom has already shown customers and partners that they cannot be trusted.
VMware vSphere Express may lower the barrier for SMBs that want to stay, but the company still faces a skeptical audience.
