Pure Storage announces VM assessment service – and it could please beleaguered VMware customers

Pure Storage has unveiled a new virtual machine (VM) assessment tool aimed at easing cost management for enterprise users in the wake of Broadcom’s VMware acquisition.

The offering – generally available in FY2025 Q4 – will help IT decision makers (ITDMs) monitor performance, plan scenarios, and rightsize recommendations through the Pure1 platform.

Optimizing VMs will be simplified with the tool, Pure Storage revealed, proving an especially attractive concept in a world where many VMware VMs have become difficult to manage under the firm’s new ownership.

Speaking during a press conference at Pure//Accelerate London 2024, Prakash Darji, GM of Pure’s Digital Experience Business Unit, said the announcement was focused on helping customers optimize their VMware license spend in the wake of the Broadcom acquisition.

“With Broadcom VMware licensing, they did what Oracle did many years ago, where they changed their metric to not what cores you are using, [but] what cores you could be using,” Darji said.

Darji’s thinking is that customers “were not prepared” for this change, thus providing the impetus for Pure Storage’s development of the new tool.

With the platform, the storage provider aims to give users “recommendations on how to optimize the core licenses within VMware,” and help them “decide what to consolidate to save on core density on the VMs.”

"We could even allow them to model how much it's costing them on their VMware licensing for putting their vCenters on a disk system versus a flash system,” Darji added, vCenter being the server management software delivered by VMware.

A turbulent time for VMware customers 

Following Broadcom’s mammoth $69 billion acquisition of VMware in 2023, customers have been left in a state of disarray over how the VMware business model is changing.

Research from Civo earlier this month revealed that over half (51.9%) of VMware customers are considering abandoning the firm’s services after Broadcom’s leadership dropped numerous licenses and products.

The Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade group has hit out at Broadcom for the changes, accusing the firm of “holding the sector to ransom” by abusing its market share to charge higher prices.

Broadcom’s CEO Hock Tan has largely shrugged off the backlash, however, describing the changes as part of a simplification process focused on driving innovation and meeting customer needs more effectively.

In June, VMware unveiled its first Cloud Foundation overhaul since the acquisition with the aim of complexity reduction, improved deployment, and improved cyber resilience.