Broadcom's Big VCF Shakeup: The Calm Guide Through the Chaos

Broadcom didn't just shuffle the VMware deck. It threw the cards in the air and told everyone to catch what they need—before the licensing winds change again. Since Broadcom closed its $61 billion acquisition of VMware back in November 2023, everyone knew changes were coming. Fewer products, more bundles, a tighter grip on licensing. But now that the dust is settling around VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), IT teams are seeing what those changes really mean. And it's… a lot. So, let's make sense of the shakeup. Here's the guide you actually need—the calm, clear version that cuts through the vendor slides and budget panic. --- ### VCF: The TL;DR Version If you're new here, VMware Cloud Foundation is VMware's all-in-one private cloud stack. It pulls together the essential ingredients—vSphere for compute, vSAN for storage, NSX for networking, Tanzu for containers, and Aria for cloud management—into a pre-built platform. Think of it as a boxed set with a lifecycle manager (SDDC Manager) baked in. Instead of manually syncing version dependencies and praying a patch doesn't wreck everything, you get one platform that installs and upgrades as a unit. It's infrastructure with guardrails. --- ### The Licensing Change That Hit Like a Freight Train Starting **November 1, 2025**, Broadcom will no longer bundle VCF licenses with public cloud offerings. That means platforms like Azure VMware Solution (AVS), Google Cloud VMware Engine, and AWS VMware Cloud won't include VCF in their SKU anymore. Instead, customers need to **bring their own portable licenses**—bought directly from Broadcom. In fact, Microsoft has already pulled the plug on bundled VCF sales through AVS as of **October 15, 2025**. Any new cloud capacity from now on? You're flying solo on licensing. Broadcom spins this as flexibility—you can move your licenses between on-prem and cloud more freely. But in the real world, it shifts procurement cycles, messes with budgets mid-fiscal, and drops a whole bunch of work into procurement and platform teams' laps. --- ### What's Actually New in VCF 9.0 At VMware Explore 2025, Broadcom rolled out **VCF 9.0**, and it's clear the platform isn't standing still. Here's the highlight reel: * **Private AI as a service:** VCF now includes infrastructure for private AI workloads, aiming to keep sensitive models and data inside the perimeter. * **AI assistant:** Built-in help navigating VCF itself—a nod to the complexity it's trying to manage. * **Cyber Compliance Advanced Service:** More knobs and dashboards for regulated industries and security-heavy environments. * **Tanzu Data Intelligence:** Adds support for lakehouse-style data processing within the same stack. The vibe? Faster, more automated, and more aligned with modern enterprise goals—if you're ready to lean into it. --- ### Here's the Real Impact, Right Now If your organization runs workloads on AVS or Google Cloud VMware Engine, here's your checklist for Q4 2025: * **Check your reserved instance dates.** If you bought before October 16, 2025, you're fine—until those expire. * **Plan for license procurement.** New nodes won't work without your own Broadcom VCF license. * **Expect cost turbulence.** Many customers saw 2–4x price jumps moving from à la carte licensing to bundles like VCF or vSphere Foundation. Core-based licensing has shifted, too: now it's 16 cores per CPU license, down from 32. That's not a typo. If you're not tracking your core counts and license usage with surgical precision, now's the time to start. --- ### Four Ways Teams Are Responding No one's reacting the same way—but patterns are emerging. 1. **Hold Steady and Optimize** These teams are locking things down. Audit hosts, kill unused clusters, track license entitlements. It's not flashy, but it's effective. Especially when you don't want to get blindsided by renewal costs in Q1 2026. 2. **Hybrid With Intent** Others are embracing the new license portability to run VCF both on-prem and in the cloud—carefully. The trick is choosing workloads that actually need VCF semantics, and then mapping license flows intentionally. Every move now has a cost implication. 3. **Diversify the Platform Stack** Some orgs are using the moment to evaluate alternatives—Proxmox, Nutanix, Hyper-V, or even ditching the hypervisor model altogether for native IaaS. It's less about panic and more about controlling future risk. 4. **Plan a Cloud Migration Off VMware** A growing set of teams are treating AVS as a transitional bridge. Rehost now, refactor over time, and retire the VMware layer entirely within 1–2 years. It's a deliberate runway out, not a jump off a cliff. --- ### What to Ask in Your Next Strategy Call * Do we have a full inventory of licensed CPUs, including how they map to the 16-core-per-license rule? * What cloud instances cross the October 2025 threshold? When do those reservations expire? * Which workloads *actually* need to stay on VCF for the next three years? * Are we using—or planning to use—VCF 9.0 features like private AI or Tanzu Data Intelligence? * Who owns license tracking, and are we prepared for audits? You don't need to answer all of these today. But you definitely need someone asking them. --- ### Governance and Cost Tips That Actually Work * **Gate every new host request.** Add a license check to your provisioning workflow. Slows you down slightly, saves massive rework later. * **Right-size hardware to the license model.** High core-count CPUs might cost more in licenses than they save in performance. Consider 16-core sweet spots. * **Use cloud reservations wisely.** If you've got AVS reserved through late 2026, that's breathing room to test, migrate, or replatform before committing to a new path. * **Don't bake off hypervisors on benchmarks alone.** Look at manageability, tooling, and org-wide impact. Cost savings can disappear if operations get messy. --- ### What to Tell Developers and Data Teams You don't need to drop a licensing deck on their desk, but you *do* want to give a heads-up: 1. **New capacity might take longer to approve.** Especially if license pools are tight or workloads need to shift platforms. 2. **VCF 9.0 brings legit value.** If they care about data security, private AI, or automating pipeline management, there's real stuff to explore here. Invite them to pilot features where it makes sense. --- ### So, What Now? Here's your calm-in-the-chaos plan: * **Map your estate.** Inventory hosts, licenses, and expiration dates. * **Get your procurement story straight.** Start licensing convos with Broadcom before you're under deadline pressure. * **Pilot what matters.** Try VCF 9.0 features that meet a real need. Ignore the rest, for now. * **Start platform evaluations early.** If you're considering alternatives, bake off now—not when your renewal clock runs out. And above all: **Don't drift.** The VCF landscape just changed. Whether you double down, branch out, or break away, make it a choice. Not a surprise.