Las Vegas – Despite deep criticism among customers of the new licensing model VMware introduced this summer, the company seems determined to stay the course with what it calls “cloud-like” pricing, judging from CEO Paul Maritz’s comments at the beginning of this year’s annual technology conference.
In July, VMware announced vSphere 5 – the latest iteration of its virtualization software – alongside a new licensing system based in part on virtual RAM (vRAM): the amount of RAM available for each virtual machine would be capped at a certain level, but all of the RAM would also be pooled such that any single VM would be able to access the maximum memory available.
While VMware positioned the licensing system as a way to crack the connection between pricing and CPU count, users complained that the system would require them to pay substantially more in licensing costs – 50% to 500% according to stories online.
Commenting on an
article in
The Register, one customer
explained that with two 10-core CPUs with 512 GB of RAM, under the old licensing system, that would have called for two vSphere Enterprise licences. Under the new system, 10 licences are required – a 500% increase.
VMware has since amended the pricing, doubling the amount of RAM available per VM in certain cases.
In a Q&A with the media following his opening keynote here at VMworld 2011 on Monday, Maritz said the entire IT industry is embracing virtualization; pricing needs to follow suit.
