VMware Partners After Broadcom: What Actually Changed for the Channel

Editor’s note (2026): This article covers the Broadcom–VMware shake-up as it affected partners and resellers, with the picture updated to reflect what has happened since. For a current, decision-oriented view, see our [VMware migration playbook] and [Broadcom/VMware CTO decision framework].

When Broadcom closed its VMware acquisition, few parts of the ecosystem felt the change faster than the channel. Resellers, integrators, and managed-service partners saw their programs, margins, and customer relationships redrawn within months. This is what changed for VMware partners — and where the market has moved since.

Background

In November 2023, Broadcom finalized its acquisition of VMware for $69 billion — the third time the company, founded in 1998, changed hands. VMware was acquired by EMC in 2004, passed to Dell when Dell bought EMC for $67 billion in 2016, and was spun back out as an independent company in 2021 before the Broadcom deal.

VMware’s market position

VMware remained a global leader in server virtualization and hyperconverged infrastructure — segments still forecast to grow. GlobalData projected a 7–8% CAGR for server virtualization between 2023 and 2030, reaching roughly $15 billion; Mordor Intelligence put the hyperconverged market on a path toward the low-$40-billion range by 2029. A strong installed base was exactly what made the ownership change so consequential for partners.

Broadcom’s playbook

Broadcom has a well-documented approach to large acquisitions: concentrate on the most profitable accounts, cut cost, and lift margins within two to three years. Applied to VMware, that raised immediate questions for the channel — and the answers came quickly.

The channel is narrowed

The effects reached staff first: around 2,000 employees were let go in early December 2023. Partners followed. Broadcom moved strategic accounts out of partner reach — pending registrations were rejected, and industry reporting (CRN) estimated the change let Broadcom take roughly 2,000 key customers direct.

The end of perpetual licenses

Broadcom discontinued VMware’s perpetual licenses and moved the portfolio to subscription-only, consolidating dozens of point products into a small number of bundles (VMware Cloud Foundation and vSphere Foundation). For many partners, the shift in billing model strained cash flow in the transition, and for customers it often meant buying far more than they had before.

A new, invite-only partner program

Broadcom then ended the existing VMware partner program and relaunched it on an invite-only basis, with reporting pointing to revenue thresholds that effectively excluded partners focused on small and mid-sized businesses.

Did it backfire? The McKinsey angle

McKinsey observed that the average VMware customer was served by around seven trusted partners, only one of whom was a classic reseller — the other six handled consulting, architecture, implementation, and managed services. Thin out that ecosystem, and friction rises around the products built on top of it. Some analysts compared Broadcom’s stance to aggressive private equity rather than a public company, and warned it could rebound over time. Two years on, the reality is mixed rather than catastrophic (below).

Where customers and partners went

Dissatisfied partners and customers had somewhere to go. Gartner Peer Insights lists a range of vSphere alternatives, rated by users on contracting, integration, service, support, and features. The most frequently cited include OpenStack, Proxmox VE, Vates (XCP-ng / Xen Orchestra), oVirt, Scale Computing, Virtuozzo, Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager, Nutanix, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, Canonical, and OpenMetal.

Competitors moved fast: Nutanix, Proxmox, and OpenStack providers ran aggressive switch campaigns, and backup vendors adjusted too — Veeam, long focused on VMware, has since added Proxmox support, a signal that “moving off VMware” had become a mainstream motion.

But the widely predicted mass exodus has been more of a steady drift. Through 2025, high-profile migrations (notably to Nutanix, Proxmox, and OpenStack) sat alongside a larger group of customers who shrank or renegotiated their VMware footprint rather than fully replatforming. In an era of Kubernetes, hybrid cloud, and infrastructure-agnostic software, “plan B” is real — but replatforming a production estate is deliberate work, not an overnight switch.

What this means for data protection

One lesson cuts across every scenario above: infrastructure changes, and data protection has to survive the change. Whether a customer stays on VMware, moves to OpenStack, or runs both during a multi-year transition, the backup and recovery layer should not be the thing that locks them in — or breaks when they move.

That is where Storware Backup and Recovery fits. Storware was built from day one for multi-vendor, multi-hypervisor environments, as a centralized data protection platform across heterogeneous estates. It empowers partners and customers with Platform Freedom and No Vendor Lock-In: protect VMware workloads today, protect the target platform (such as OpenStack) tomorrow, and keep Data Protection Continuity across the transition — one platform, one universal license, either side of a migration.