If you’ve received an email invitation by Broadcom between February 1, 2024 to March 30, 2024 stating one of the following, then you are eligible to resell VMware licenses:
- Invitation via email to be a Broadcom Advantage Pinnacle Partner
- Invitation via email to be a Broadcom Advantage Premier Partner
If you’ve not received an email from Broadcom to be a Broadcom Advantage Pinnacle or Premier Partner by March 30, 2024, then you are not eligible to resell VMware licenses yourself.
Here is a screenshot of what the email invitation to be a Broadcom Advantage Partner for their White label Program would look like::
If you’re a VMware Select Partner, you can continue to buy your VMware licenses from the distributor that you currently buy it from today, e.g. Ingram.
Alternatively, you can go to your Broadcom VMware portal, “Register as a Tier Partner” and find a Broadcom VMware Pinnacle Partner or Broadcom VMware Premier Partner such as Evolve IP to buy VMware licensing to resell to your customers from.
No, if you are a registered tier partner, the only way you could procure licenses to resell to your customers is by partnering with a Broadcom Premier or Pinnacle Partner. The only way to remain in VCSP is to be Pinnacle or Premier and have a direct relationship with an aggregator (now CCM). Registered partners will need to partner directly with a Pinnacle or Premier that is offering the white label services. If a registered partner procures licenses directly they would need to be invited into the reseller program by Broadcom. Those licenses are meant to resold only and can not be used as a cloud provider. If they are it is a violation of the EULA.
The Broadcom Advantage Partner Program is structured around distributors and resellers, focusing on facilitating services for VMware cloud service providers (CSPs) and enterprise customers through its Pinnacle and Premier Distributor Program.
The Broadcom Advantage Partner Program is a revamped initiative by Broadcom, succeeding the VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) Program. It narrows down the participation from 4,500 to 500 participants, distributing them into two categories: 100 participants in the Pinnacle Program and 400 in the Premier Program. Evolve IP is a Premier partner. This new ecosystem is designed for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) to sell licenses and offer managed services related to Broadcom VMware/cloud offerings. This transition to this new program aims to streamline the ecosystem and focus on a smaller, more elite group of MSPs/CSPs.
Evolve IP offers the ability to sell licenses, support CSPs outside the distributor program, and provide higher levels of service to enterprise customers. This includes selling perpetual and subscription-based licenses with added management capabilities like patching and monitoring.
Evolve IP views the transition as an opportunity to engage with both MSPs and enterprise customers looking for new partnerships or needing to navigate the licensing renewal process. By offering competitive pricing and managed services, Evolve IP aims to attract those affected by the transition, positioning itself as a capable partner in the evolving ecosystem.
Through programs like Evolve IP's VMware Safe Harbor Program. Companies not qualifying for the Broadcom Advantage Program can now purchase their licenses through Pinnacle and Premier partners. This opens a pathway for competitors and former participants of the VCSP who didn't make the cut to still engage in the ecosystem.
Pinnacle and Premier partners are managed service providers that offer licenses and typically provide a managed service offering, including hosting on their platforms. Select and Registered are categories mainly focused on reselling VMware licenses without the managed services component.
The licensing structure has shifted from offering piecemeal components to bundled subscriptions, requiring the purchase of an all-inclusive subscription. This marks a move from perpetual licenses to subscription-based licensing, encompassing core components like vSphere, vSAN, NSX networking, and more within the VMware Cloud Foundation.
The White Label Program is a new initiative announced for Pinnacle partners, allowing them to migrate enterprise customers' VMware stacks to their data centers. It offers a strategy for data center evacuation by managed service providers. The White Label Plus Program extends these capabilities to Premier partners, focusing on renewing licenses on existing hardware.
The transition to the Broadcom Advantage Program introduces a shift from CPU/RAM-based billing to core count-based billing. This change affects both the method of calculating usage and the overall pricing strategy, which will now focus on a bundled license approach.
Customers holding perpetual licenses are given a window to migrate to the new subscription-based model. This transition period is critical for enterprise customers to decide whether to renew their licenses directly or consider moving to a managed service provider, which can offer additional services on top of licensing.
Enterprise customers transitioning to subscription-based licenses during their renewal window will need to adjust their management and consumption models. Evolve IP can manage these new licenses and alleviate some operational overhead for these customers.
One of the main challenges includes the tight timeline for transitioning billing structures and the operational readiness of the Broadcom portal, which may not be fully prepared to support the new licensing model immediately. This situation creates confusion and operational difficulties for participants trying to comply with the new requirements.
Clients may have a need to spin up additional hosts for various reasons such as a DR situation (Test/Failover) or to perform host maintenance. This extra core consumption will be tracked by the usage collectors and billed per minute while the extra hardware is running with a live workload. For example, let’s say you have a 3-host cluster with 96 committed cores, and you need to spin up an additional host to perform maintenance. You will be charged for every minute that additional hosts are up and running and you have workloads spread out across 4 hosts but once you move one of the active hosts into maintenance mode and it no longer has running workloads on it that overage clock would stop.
Yes, you can increase your commit level of cores at any time to co-term with your current agreement. If this increase in commit pushes you into a new discount tier those discounts would also be added to the contract going forward.
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