VMware Licence Management
How can we advise you?
Optimise licensing position and negotiate contracts.
Respond effectively, minimise disruption and negotiate settlement.
Cut costs, maintain compliance and increase security.
Manage VMware licensing in VMware’s cloud or a third-party platform.
Truly independent VMware licensing advice to help you keep VMware licence costs down and your audit risk profile low.
VMware’s software has taken a backseat as more and more organisations embrace the capabilities of public cloud hyperscalers. The company has been on a mission to restore declining revenues by moving to per-core licensing, converting customers from perpetual to subscription models, and upping its audit frequency.
While VMware may be using some sneaky tactics to extract as much revenue out of clients in the short term as possible, it isn’t going away anytime soon. VMware software is still at the heart of data centre operations and core applications in most enterprises, and this software and the associated licences still needs to be managed, whether they are on premise or in the cloud.
Whether you’re thinking of jumping ship or doubling down on your commitment to VMware, now’s the time to act. Invictus Partners can help you understand your current VMware licensing footprint and what to do with it going forward.
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VMware Licence Management: Ensure software usage stays in line with the terms of your VMware ELA.
Invictus Partners provides expert licence advisory across all VMware product portfolios. We do this in three phases, which are available as an end-to-end service, or as separate engagements.
Phase 1
VMware Licence Review
Phase 2
VMware Licence Optimisation
Phase 3
VMware Contract Negotiation
Phase 1
VMware Licence Compliance Review
Invictus Partners conducts a comprehensive review of your VMware estate and compares your installments and usage with the terms of your licence agreement. We reconcile device and user data against Active Directory data where possible, and map virtual machines to physical hosts. This process gives you a clear view of your licensing position and uncovers any compliance issues.
Phase 2
VMware Enterprise Licensing Optimisation
Once we know how VMware is deployed and used in your organisation, we seek to understand current and future business needs to make recommendations on your best-fit VMware licensing model.
Phase 3
VMware Enterprise Agreement Negotiation
Our team can give your negotiations a boost by identifying the best licensing and contractual terms for your organisation, conducting price benchmarking, and helping you negotiate with VMware to achieve the optimal outcome.
Download our VMware Licence Management datasheet
Download our VMware Licence Management datasheet
VMware Audit Defence: Minimise the business impact of a licence audit and strengthen your negotiation position.
Invictus Partners works with you to minimise the impact of a VMware software audit, significantly reducing the stress and hours involved in managing the process. We use our extensive knowledge and experience to deliver the best possible financial and business outcome for you.
Depending on your needs, we can play a supporting role by advising your in-house legal team on the most appropriate way to handle audit-related communications or work in the trenches with your vendor and IT teams to meet and defend any audit actions from VMware and its appointed auditor.
Our VMware Licence Audit Services
We can help defend against a VMware audit in three phases, which are available as an end-to-end service, or as separate engagements.
Phase 1
Internal VMware Audit
Phase 2
Remediation Strategy
Phase 3
VMware Audit Negotiation
Phase 1
Internal VMware Audit
When facing an audit, you must know where you stand in terms of your entitlements versus usage before sharing any information with VMware. To find out exactly what you’re dealing with, we start by performing an internal review of your VMware software usage against contracted entitlements.
Phase 2
VMware Remediation Strategy
Once we have identified where the VMware licensing exposures are, we develop an effective remediation strategy and guide you through the implementation process.
Phase 3
VMware Audit Negotiation Advisory
We ensure your organisation has the right response and that your negotiation strategy is planned and effectively executed.
VMware Software Asset Management: Licence management, audit defence and vendor management in one end-to-end service.
Invictus Partners can review and monitor your VMware deployments on an ongoing basis with our VMware SAM service. This gives you a complete and continuous picture of the software you own and keeps you in an optimal licensing position by addressing any compliance exposures as they arise.
We tailor our SAM service to suit each organisation’s needs. We can provide SAM for VMware only, or as a multi-vendor solution to help you manage your entire software environment. Additionally, we can help you build an in-house SAM function or you can outsource it all to us.
VMware Cloud Licensing Advisory: Stay compliant while you migrate and optimally run VMware in cloud environments.
VMware private cloud: VMware Cloud Foundation licensing
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is a comprehensive platform that includes vSphere for virtualisation, vSAN for software-defined storage, NSX for software-defined networking, and vRealize Suite for management and automation.
Before considering a deployment of VCF, you need to assess your current workloads, applications, and data – and how they are licensed – to understand their dependencies and requirements.
Invictus Partners can work with you to:
- Ensure compliance with VMware’s licence mobility policies during migration.
- Keep track of VM provisioning and decommissioning to avoid over-licensing or under-licensing as VMs are dynamically created or removed.
- Ensure proper sizing of VMs to align with licensing metrics.
VMware hybrid cloud licensing
Organisations wanting to adopt a hybrid approach can integrate on-premise VMware environments with public cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure. It’s important to understand how this model affects your licensing, especially if you will be moving workloads back and forth between environments.
VMware Cloud Connector for hybrid cloud management
VMware Cloud Connector is a tool that enables data synchronisation and workload migration between on-premise data centres and public cloud platforms.
Licensing VMware in public cloud environments
Different cloud providers offer VMware-based services, but the licensing terms vary. We can help you understand the licensing impacts of moving VMware to different cloud platforms. It should also be noted that moving to a third-party cloud makes you a target for a VMware audit – just in case you need another reason to get your licensing in order.
VMware multi-cloud licensing
Multi-cloud is becoming a strategic priority for many enterprises and VMware is positioning itself as a partner on this journey. With VMware cloud
offerings, enterprises can integrate on-premises and public cloud infrastructures into a common IT environment. Naturally, though, more cloud platforms create more licensing risk. Invictus Partners has the expertise to help you maintain consistent compliance across multiple cloud environments.
VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture for multi-cloud management
VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture is a suite of services designed to simplify multi-cloud management. VMware customers can use these tools and services to manage, deploy, and monitor workloads across public cloud platforms and on-premise environments.
Licensing VMware on AWS Cloud
AWS is VMware’s preferred public cloud partner for all vSphere-based workloads. VMware Cloud on AWS is an integrated offering that provides access to VMware software and services on AWS infrastructure, enabling easy migration and hybrid cloud scenarios. Invictus Partners can help you weigh up the pros and cons of VMware Cloud on AWS versus standard AWS, and help you optimise your licensing for your chosen environment.
VMware Cloud on AWS or standard AWS?
VMware Cloud on AWS is managed and billed by VMware, completely separate from any existing AWS accounts your organisation has. While these two services can be integrated, be mindful that this will add extra steps (and costs) to your migration project.
Licensing VMware on Azure
Microsoft’s Azure VMware Solution (AVS) allows organisations to run vSphere cluster natively on Microsoft Azure infrastructure. Microsoft manages the environment while you manage your workloads using the same VMware tools (vCenter, vSphere Client, vRealize Operations, etc). VMware HCX technology is also included to support migration projects. Invictus Partners can help you optimise your VMware licensing footprint and rightsize your on-premise workloads for AVS.
VMware Cloud on Azure or standard Azure?
AVS may offer an easier option for migration purposes, but it comes with huge monthly fees. Azure is already associated with bill shock, so you want to make sure the benefits of AVS are worth the investment if heading down this route. Choosing between AVS and a standard Azure environment requires an understanding of how your organisation currently uses VMware, how you plan to use it, and what you hope to achieve by moving to the cloud. Our Cloud Licensing specialists can assist you with this.
Licensing VMware on Google Cloud Platform
VMware customers can lift and shift applications to a dedicated VMware Software-Defined Data Centre in Google Cloud Platform (GCP) with Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE). This Google-run service comes fully integrated with other GCP services, and with VMware licences included. It’s still a good idea to review your VMware estate to make sure you are compliant before you move and that you avoid moving across licences you don’t use.
Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) or standard GCP?
To determine which migration path is best for your organisation, you must understand your current VMware environment. Our team can evaluate this for you by conducting a VMware Licence Review, and gain an understanding of your business goals to gauge how suited the GCP platform is to fulfil your current and future-state infrastructure requirements.
Licensing VMware on IBM Cloud
IBM provides hosting for VMware workloads with IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions. IBM Cloud also offers managed VMware-as-a-Service whereby IBM handles the configuration, hosting and management of your VMware environment. Invictus Partners can help you navigate an IBM Cloud migration and ensure you are correctly licensed with VMware.The Invictus Partners difference: VMware Consulting Services
Invictus Partners is an independent software licensing advisory firm that supports and supplements our clients’ in-house commercial, procurement, IT and vendor management teams. We aren’t affiliated with VMware (or any other vendor), but we do have a team of specialists with in-depth knowledge of VMware’s licensing terms, contractual clauses, agreement structures and sales processes.
We have developed proven methodologies and strategies to empower organisations to take charge of their VMware licensing, reduce costs and compliance risks, and bolster their negotiating power.