VMware infrastructure under your own name

What else is at stake?

For providers that have built their own infrastructure proposition, Broadcom’s partner restructuring is not merely a licensing issue. It affects the very foundation of how their services are structured.

Organizations that have invested in and managed their own hardware have built more than just capacity. Achieving Gold or Platinum partner status with Dell or HP is not a side note. It means better purchasing conditions, priority support, and direct relationships with manufacturers. Those statuses are the result of consistent investments made over many years. Once purchasing volume disappears, those benefits disappear as well, creating consequences that extend far beyond VMware licensing itself.

In addition, hardware in this sector is rarely fully owned outright. Leasing constructions are common. These contracts are not easily transferable, and their timelines rarely align with the deadlines Broadcom has imposed.

And then there is the proposition itself. CSPs that have served customers for years with their own platform, their own engineers, and their own operational processes did not build that overnight. It is not an asset that can simply be handed over. It is the core of what differentiates an organization in the market.

Two movements in the market

In conversations with CSPs and end customers, it has become clear that the market is moving in two directions. Part of the workload landscape will move away from VMware in the coming years. Not because VMware is failing as a platform, but because licensing costs have increased significantly and alternatives for certain use cases have matured enough to become viable options.

But another part simply cannot move away. Business-critical applications deeply integrated into VMware architectures, environments where certification or compliance requires a specific platform, or workloads where migration introduces unacceptable risks. For that part of the landscape, VMware remains the reality. Which means the key question is how to organize this in a workable way toward spring 2027, when Broadcom’s new program rules will be fully enforced.

A route that respects what already exists

CSPs that want to preserve their customer relationships, avoid completely rebuilding their proposition overnight, and prevent external parties from gaining access to their platform are taking a logical and rational position. That is not stubbornness. It is about protecting what has been built over many years.

At the same time, standing still is not an option. Spring 2027 may still seem far away, but large environments cannot be migrated within a few months. Leasing constructions take time to resolve. And customers deserve clarity about what will happen to their environments.

What does help is starting with insight. Which workloads can move away from VMware and which cannot? How are licenses structured, and when do they expire? What are the implications for hardware investments and the vendor relationships connected to them? Only when that picture is clear can organizations make decisions that truly fit both their own business and the customers depending on them.

That requires a tailored route. Not a standard migration toward a new platform, but an approach that respects existing hardware, ongoing contracts, and the customer proposition as the starting point. For some environments, that may mean a phased transition toward a Pinnacle partner as the underlying layer, while maintaining the existing service proposition and customer relationship. For others, the challenge is primarily about compliance and lifecycle management, where the goal is to keep existing infrastructure running in a controlled and sustainable way for as long as possible.

Licenses are not the objective

Fundaments is a Broadcom VCSP Pinnacle Partner and has been working with VMware infrastructure for more than 25 years. That position provides access to licensing structures, technical support, and direct communication lines with Broadcom that are highly relevant for organizations currently facing these challenges.

But the approach is explicitly not about selling licenses or forcing environments onto a single platform. Fundaments is not looking to acquire hardware from other providers. Nor is it expected that every CSP should move workloads toward the Fundaments VCF platform. That may fit some situations, but certainly not all of them.

What Fundaments does offer is an honest conversation. No standard proposition, no commercial pressure. Instead, engineers and specialists with 25 years of VMware experience who understand the situation, recognize what is at stake, and think along about what is realistically achievable.

“Always close” means being available when needed, in the way that best fits what an organization wants and requires.