HPE is waving a free year of virtualisation software at customers fed up with Broadcom’s VMware price gouging.
At HPE Discover in Las Vegas, Hewlett Packard Enterprise said new customers could use HPE Morpheus Software VM Essentials free for “up to one year”. HPE describes the package as a “VMware alternative”.
According to Ars Technica the software includes a hardware virtual machine hypervisor, unified management and tools to manage VMware ESXi and HVM clusters from one console. HPE reckons customers can migrate when they are ready, which sounds less painful than Broadcom’s licensing spreadsheet.
The promotion gives new VM Essentials customers up to one free year of licences. It throws in a year of HPE Zerto for $1 to support non-disruptive migration and zero per cent interest on software through HPE Financial Services.
That is much cheaper than Broadcom’s VMware vSphere model. Since buying VMware, Broadcom has axed perpetual licences and bundled products into packages that made many customers reach for the smelling salts.
HPE recommends charging $600 per CPU socket per year for VM Essentials. Broadcom has moved vSphere licensing to a per-core basis, a shift that has gone down about as well as a server room flood.
HPE North American channel and partner ecosystem vice-president Jeremiah Jenson told CRN: “Customers are feeling quite a bit of pain in the change that some of the virtualisation companies have put there, specifically Broadcom.”
The executive claimed VM Essentials could offer up to 90 per cent cost savings compared with VMware. He said it could help “eliminate vendor lock-in and simplify hybrid IT”.
Since 1 March, HPE has offered a free year of VM Essentials via rebate to customers buying an AMD server and a one-year VM Essentials licence.
VM Essentials is sold only through channel partners. That is a sharp contrast with Broadcom’s VMware approach, after the chip outfit slashed the number of resellers allowed to sell VMware products.
HPE executive vice-president and chief technology officer Fidelma Russo said: “One of the big things we see is that as customers are going through this journey on transforming their operating model, you end up with double expenses.”
