VMware is attempting to reconnect with small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) after pricing and sales practices under Broadcom pushed many customers away. Following Broadcom’s acquisition of the virtualization company, perpetual license sales ended and were replaced by expensive, bundled, subscription-based offerings that many smaller organizations could no longer justify.
The clearest example is VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), the flagship private cloud bundle that has served as Broadcom’s central focus since the takeover. Many SMBs consider VCF too costly and overloaded with features they do not need. Despite this, numerous customers have reported that VMware sales representatives continued to steer them toward VCF, with some claiming reps told them that the lower-priced vSphere Standard edition was no longer available.
Paul Turner, chief product officer for VCF, acknowledged that Broadcom’s sales incentives encouraged the team to promote VCF aggressively. “We corrected this,” Turner said, admitting that at times VMware placed “too big a focus on VCF.”
What’s Coming for vSphere Standard
An “updated version” of vSphere Standard is expected to arrive soon, with additional details likely at VMware’s Explore conference in Frankfurt in October 2026, according to Ram Velaga, president of Broadcom’s Infrastructure Software Group.
VMware has not refreshed vSphere Standard since 2022, even though an updated vSphere shipped with VCF 9 in 2025. Turner explained the gap by pointing to the company’s decision to prioritize strengthening VCF’s security. Velaga added that VMware focused on VCF to position private clouds as a more affordable and manageable alternative to public cloud services. He said introducing a low-end virtualization product earlier could have caused customers to “get distracted.”
A Trust Problem That Runs Deeper Than Features
For many former customers and partners, the deeper issue is trust. Dean Colpitts, CTO of Canadian managed services provider Members IT Group (MITG), said his company is doing no VMware business and does not plan to in the future. MITG was cut from VMware’s reseller program last year after a 19-year partnership.
“Broadcom has burned all the bridges. While it may be easier to migrate to whatever this new [vSphere] Standard release is from vSphere 8, they have already shown both customers and [channel] partners they can’t be trusted,” Colpitts said. Similar reactions have appeared in online discussions, where one Reddit user summarized the mood with “Too little, too late. We’ve moved on.”
The renewed interest in smaller deals comes as competitors actively court frustrated VMware users. Sumit Bhatia, co-author of Navigating VMware Turmoil in the Broadcom Era, said the update shows Broadcom “heard the market,” but noted that “three years of neglect, quote refusals, and VCF-only sales tactics have already pushed many SMBs toward Nutanix, Proxmox, and [Microsoft] Hyper-V.”
Bhatia added that regaining confidence would require “predictable, published pricing with no surprise renewal spikes” and sustained
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Image: arstechnica.com
