VMware users rail against licence price rises

VMware faced a backlash from users over new vSphere licences with some threatening to jump ship to competitor Microsoft's HyperV.

The revised licence [pdf], launched with VMware's renewed efforts to push cloud-like infrastructure on the enterprise, would see customers licenced for each processor and in line with allocated virtual memory. Physical core and memory limitations previously imposed on licence tiers were removed with vSphere 5.0.

It said it was simpler and cut constraints and that changes reflected a move to on-demand billing.

But customers were quick to criticise it as boosting requirements for more costly licences to cover environments upgraded to vSphere 5.0.

Users on the official VMware forum calculated they would have to double and in some cases triple their licences to upgrade to the new version.

University of Wisconsin systems administrator Robert Plankers wrote in a blog entry that it would not likely affect customers to the same extent as first thought but could impact licence and budget concerns for virtual machines.

"I don't like that the change penalises those using the 'fewer, bigger machines' model, which is a giant time and money saver," he wrote.

"I do like the new licensing because I can now assign direct values for chargeback for [virtual machines], based on size. If you don't do chargeback this is neither here nor there."

Australian defence

VMware's newly appointed managing director for Australia, Duncan Bennet, defended the changes at the Sydney launch of the vSphere 5.0 product.

"It's a change that people have had five hours to contemplate," he said. "A lot of customers were involved in how that licensing should be put together."

It was unclear if this included a beta program of 120 Australian customers, including a Federal Government department, that was launched in February to trial use of vSphere 5.0.

VMware hoped to win back angry customers and resellers with marketing.

Michael Warrilow, VMware's senior manager for products and services in Asia Pacific, said it was writing an upgrade calculator to allow customers and partners to determine additional licences or costs in upgrading.

"Education is key," he said. "We've been preparing for that."

He said that for an average VMware user, the new licences allowed for 20 percent of head room for 4 gigabytes of vRAM, allowing for a consolidation ratio of 10 to one.

Warrilow said those customers still in dispute could elect to stay on the old arrangements.

But VMware will stop selling earlier versions of the software from August 22.