Kathy Gibson is at VMware Explore in Barcelona – As companies move to a hybrid cloud and multi-cloud operations model, the way they licence their software has to change too.
Ian Jansen van Rensburg, director: solutions engineering and lead technologist at VMware South Africa, says the company is moving quickly to switch over to a subscription-based software licensing model.
“The world is becoming subscription-based, so it makes sense to use software the same way,” he explains.
“VMware already realises a big part of its revenue from subscriptions and we aim to be a subscriptions-only company by the end of 2023.”
A subscription boost programme is in place to help customers understand the new model.
“But customers cannot efficiently employ a multi cloud and hybrid cloud model if they have perpetual software licensing. If you want to embrace the new technologies, it just makes sense to be subscription-based.
“So we are slowly converting customers to a subscription model as their current licences lapse.”
Customers get a lot more than just a software licence under the new model, Jansen van Rensburg points out. “Inside those subscriptions are things like skills and support, as well as access to AWS and Google cloud. So there is a lot of value-add.
“For instance, when you move workloads from on-premise into the public cloud, you don’t need additional licensing for both environments.”
Another initiative that VMware is undertaking is helping customers to consume all the licences they purchase.