Third-party VMware support for perpetual licenses growing

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Rimini Street, headquartered in Las Vegas, began selling support services for VMware in May last year and offers two models, an all-inclusive model with 24/7 support or a pay-as-you-go consumption model.

The vendor has sold support services for products from vendors like Oracle and SAP since 2005, while fending off legal challenges for doing so.

The VMware offering has attracted dozens of customers that want to maintain support regulatory or piece-of-mind reasons before considering a next move, said Rodney Kenyon, group vice president of Rimini Custom at Rimini Street.

Customers approaching Rimini Street appreciate the capabilities of their VMware software, Kenyon said, but the business strategy shift by Broadcom to make the platform a subscription service on short notice following the acquisition left many in a bind.

Third-party support like Rimini Street and its competitors can at least offer some additional time to strategize, he said.

"People are looking for flexibility," Kenyon said. "VMware is an amazing product, [but] we want to help customers have the flexibility to drive their own decisions and what they want to do. Some of them might decide to go back to Broadcom at a later date."

Rimini's VMware offerings do not directly touch the code itself, which is closed source, but instead build around the core product to handle specific security requirements and support services, according to Kenyon.

Many of the VMware software offerings themselves are stable and mature, so much of the Rimini Street offering focuses on resolving specific customer issues, Kenyon said. Rimini Street plans to launch patching services to address security issues in the future.

Technicians and support staff for the service may be ex-VMware employees, as the layoffs by Broadcom following the acquisition opened up the talent market, he added.

"Of all the tickets I've seen come through the door, there hasn't been one that we haven't been able to resolve," he said. "VMware was kind enough to let go of amazing talent from all around the world."
VMware CEO Hock Tan has said the company will still provide some support for perpetual license holders, specifically "free access to zero-day security patches for supported versions of vSphere" and other offerings, according to a blog post from April 2024. Existing support contracts with Broadcom and VMware will continue until they expire.

A Broadcom spokesperson said the vendor defines a zero-day security patch as a patch or workaround for Critical Severity Security Alerts with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score greater than or equal to 9.0. Supported versions of VMware vSphere for such updates include versions and associated point releases of vSphere 7 and 8.

"Releases of major new innovations and features are only available to subscription customers," wrote Broadcom in response to Informa TechTarget. "Customers that move to the new subscription offerings will substantially benefit from comprehensive infrastructure security, resiliency, and compliance, while also benefiting from Broadcom's continuous innovation."

Warranty void if seal is broken

Enterprise IT customers appreciate the flexibility that third-party support provides, said R "Ray" Wang, principal analyst and CEO of Constellation Research.

Broadcom has a gun to the head of most of their customers.

Broadcom's quick switch to subscription models echoes the feeling many customers had over similar moves by SAP and Oracle, so the added time a new support contract brings is valuable, he said.

"Broadcom has a gun to the head of most of their customers," Wang said.

Companies like Rimini Street can deliver lower price support than the first-party vendor, so many customers may still purchase from SAP or Oracle but opt for third-party support, he said.

 "[Third-party vendors] typically have a better track record [in delivering maintenance] than the vendors would," Wang said.

The experience renewing VMware contracts with Broadcom has many CIOs interested in limiting vendor dependency for the future, Wang said. Open source software is an alternative for virtualization but lacks a "critical mass" of enterprise users for viable support alternatives. Cloud hyperscalers also bring a litany of vendor dependencies to the data center.

As an alternative, companies could create in-house alternatives through Generative AI, he said. Code created in-house could be more easily tracked, recorded and customized to suit specific virtualization needs.

"You don't want to be at the beck and call of a vendor," Wang said.

Time is still of the essence for VMware perpetual license customers to make a platform decision, said Mike Matchett, principal analyst and CEO of Small World Big Data.

Patching assurances from Broadcom itself will likely only cover gaping holes in security that could damage the brand and may not protect every vulnerability, he said. The hardware licensed to specific software will also wear over time and force the decision possibly before a VMware contract is up.

Third-party support can stave off a decision for some time, but the lack access to the code itself means a new vulnerability is likely, Matchett said.

"You have to get off that, [as] there's nothing you can do to fix that," he said. "There's hard stops to platforms or hardware. If [Broadcom] steps in to patch critical security vulnerabilities, it's to keep egg off of their face."

Tim McCarthy is a news writer for Informa TechTarget covering cloud and data storage.