VIDEO: VMware vSphere Licensing Updates: Benefits and Opportunities

Mark G.:

Recently VMware's done a lot of changes around their virtualization licensing, and a lot of it benefits the customer. In the past there used to be a vCloud Suite and a vRealize Suite. They were made up of completely different product sets. So, depending on what you're actually trying to accomplish in the data center, you might find that one product met all of your needs, except for two software pieces. Then you'd be buying different piecemeal components all a la carte. It just was really complicated. VMware came up with and realized that every customer uses the vSphere software as that foundational layer to run the traditional ESX and the vCenter management components. They've really simplified it, where a vRealize Suite now at a base level will add the four major components that almost every customer had an interest in and would roll out in the environment.

Then as you go through the different versions of that suite, they injected more and more automation. That really builds towards that software defined data center. From operationalizing everything, to bringing through that next level of automation, to truly having a software defined data center is the way that that licensing now lays out for the customer. It's actually cost effective too, because there's actually finally a discount available to people when they buy the suites. There was also a vCloud Quite, and vCloud Suite was very complicated, the way it pieced different products together. Today it really lines up with the vRealize Suite and adds the vSphere licensing on top of it. That really simplifies it, because if you like the vRealize components and you have the vSphere, you can just buy the vCloud licensing. Again, better discounts available to you, so you're actually saving some money.

Well, one, you can get that licensing benefit. Right? So, there's some savings there. What it does is it gives customers a real road-map of here are the different products that are available in the standard, advanced, and enterprise suites. The difference is that standard suite lines up with operationalizing your environment. How do you get a better control of what you have running in your infrastructure? As you go from standard to advanced, how do I integrate the hybrid cloud models? As you move all the way over towards that enterprise suite, it really gets into that I have a software defined data center, where I can actually do things in the cloud, bring it back on prem, and automate those processes, and really I can align IT to what the business costs need to be for the organization.