VMware Enterprise licensing rumors

A few of my enterprise customers have been asking me if I know anything about the recent changes in VMware licensing.  Specifically, that VMware was to discontinue vSphere Enterprise in an effort to upgrade them to the new Enterprise Plus versions.  At first, I dismissed this as harmless FUD but after a few more clients and some of my own sales reps began asking, I looked into it a bit more but couldn’t really find anything ‘official’ on VMware.com’s site.

Today on a Roundtable call with VMware, @Larstr pointed me to another blog post on VMGuy’s site that had some convincing information.  Although still not an OFFICIAL press release from VMware, this information comes from a variety of very good sources. 🙂

I won’t go into the gory details (you can read VMGuy’s post for that) but in a nutshell, VMware WILL CONTINUE to sell and renew the Enterprise Editions of it’s vSphere license.  Rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Hope this helps clear up the situation on licensing.   You can refer back to my vSphere Licensing Post for a refresher on the various editions and the features that they entitle you too.