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In March, Broadcom announced a significant change to the licensing and renewal policy for its VMware virtualization software suite. Effective April 10, 2025, all customers are now required to purchase licenses based on a new minimum threshold of 72 CPU cores—regardless of whether their actual usage falls below that number.
Core-based licensing is a common practice in the server software industry, where license costs are calculated by the number of CPU cores rather than by the number of physical devices. For instance, a server equipped with two 16-core CPUs would necessitate the purchase of a 32-core license.
Prior to Broadcom’s acquisition, VMware’s licensing model was relatively lenient. Enterprises could purchase perpetual licenses instead of being locked into subscriptions, and licensing was often based on CPU socket count. A company could, for example, license just two sockets, even if each CPU contained as many as 192 cores.
Following the acquisition, however, Broadcom made sweeping changes that significantly altered the landscape. Perpetual licenses were discontinued in favor of a subscription-only model, and the minimum licensing requirement was raised from 16 cores to 72. These changes dramatically increased costs for small and medium-sized enterprises, eroding their margins and profitability.
Such moves were widely viewed as exploitative, prompting a wave of backlash from the business community—particularly among SMEs. Many organizations announced plans to abandon VMware entirely in favor of alternative virtualization platforms. The outcry appears to have had an impact: Broadcom has now reinstated the 16-core licensing option.
Broadcom distributors have since confirmed that the company has officially withdrawn the controversial policy mandating a 72-core minimum for new license purchases and renewals. Notably, Broadcom did not revise the policy—it rescinded it outright, suggesting that a new framework may be introduced in the future.
It remains unclear whether Broadcom intends to continue pushing for a minimum core-based licensing scheme. While the 72-core threshold provoked significant resistance, the company may opt to reintroduce a lower baseline, such as 32 cores. However, it seems increasingly unlikely that Broadcom will revert to VMware’s previous, more flexible per-socket licensing model on a long-term basis.
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