Google, Oracle, Microsoft make their case for VMware migrations – HPE on the outer?

Google Cloud has delivered a Broadcom-compliant version of its cloudy VMware offering, and pitched it as a keenly priced migration target.

The VMware Cloud Foundation on Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) does a lot of the things Broadcom wants its channel to deliver. For starters, it is based on Cloud Foundation – Broadcom's preferred bundle of VMware's hybrid cloud products. It also recognizes Broadcom's license portability plan, which it advances as a fine way to use VMware entitlements flexibly across on-prem and cloudy resources.

It also reflects the fact that Broadcom offers its top tier "Pinnacle" partners the chance to resell its wares at discounts that are hard to find from other sources. Google Cloud is therefore able to tout 20 percent lower support costs when users commit to multi-year deals, and 35 percent lower server rental costs for those willing to make three-year commitments.

Those server costs can be applied to four new instance types tuned for VMware workloads and also launched last Friday. The ve2-mega-96 offers 96 hyperthreads, and the ve2-mega-128 offers 128. Both are compute nodes.

The ve2-standard-so offers 25.6TB raw data storage – a sum doubled in the ve2-mega-so. As Cloud Foundation includes VMware's VSAN virtual storage, most users will consider the "so" instances.

Google's also offering migration services, incentives and bonuses for those who increase their use of the service across a year. The latter offer is aimed straight at those who migrate workloads to the G-cloud.

Oracle made a similar pitch a couple of weeks back, when it announced a new instance type for its VMware Solution that bundles Intel's 32-core Xeon Platinum 8358 Processor and an Nvidia Tensor Core A10 GPU. Big Red also teased a forthcoming instance type based on AMD's 192-core EPYC 9J14 processor.

• VMware by Broadcom makes its stack easier to live with, as promised
• HPE intros virtualization solution it says is totally not targeting grumpy VMware customers
• Notorious cyber gang UNC3944 attacks vSphere and Azure to run VMs inside victims' infrastructure
• VMware and Dell back together with fresh OEM agreement

Microsoft also has a cloudy VMware offering: The Azure VMware Solution. However, according to CRN, Microsoft's chief commercial officer Judson Althoff recently described Broadcom's changes to VMware pricing and licensing as "the greatest gift of all" by encouraging customers to move to the cloud.

"Everyone wants to get off of VMware and get into the cloud," Althoff reportedly told a Microsoft partner event, at which he apparently described the Azure VMware Solution as a chance to "get customers unlocked out of the VMware pricing challenges they're having, and/or even bring their own licenses to the cloud."

He might want to be a little more circumspect with future remarks – an industry source who ought to know recently told The Register's Virtualization Desk that Broadcom has broken up with ended HPE's membership of the VMware cloud service provider program, with the Silicon Valley IT veteran set to lose its reseller status.

VMware hasn't responded to our inquiries regarding the matter.

HPE told us it "values its relationship with Broadcom and we continue to work together to support our customers and partners as Broadcom transitions its VMware go-to-market approach."

Which is noticeably not a denial. Our source was unsure of the reason for the maybe-split, but we can imagine two: HPE creating its own virtualization stack, or the two companies struggling to fit Broadcom's licensing into HPE's GreenLake IT-as-a-service platform. ®

Editor's note: As indicated above, we've updated this article to more precisely define the breakup between HPE and Broadcom. We're happy to clarify this situation for IT buyers.