VMware made its Fusion and Workstation software that creates and manages virtual machines free for personal use earlier this year. Now, the company announced that as of Monday, it’s free for everyone, including commercial customers. Also, the Fusion (for Macs) and Workstation (for Windows and Linux) Pro versions are no longer available for purchase.
Broadcom’s $61 billion acquisition of VMware in 2022 was one of the biggest tech acquisitions ever. Since then, it has bundled the company’s products to “simplify its portfolio” and dropped many existing SKUs. It has already announced an end to offering VMware perpetual licensing for standalone offerings to push enterprises towards its Cloud Foundation or vSphere Foundation subscription products.
However, in this Business Insider report mentioned by Tom’s Hardware, some business customers claimed they’ve seen prices spike following the acquisition as the company focuses on subscriptions and its most lucrative customers to increase annual revenue. One unnamed corporate customer quoted by BI said their prices increased by 175 percent and compared the situation to being “held for ransom” because of the difficulty in possibly switching to something else.
Commercial contracts will remain in effect for businesses, and they will receive the same level of support through the end of their contracts. However, VMware is discontinuing its support ticketing for troubleshooting after that and says instead to use the community, documentation, and support articles available online.
