A year of free HPE software “a step in the right direction” in the VMware competition

HPE’s new marketing campaign aims to convince customers to seriously consider migrating to VMware. Although many third parties research pointed to a more money VMware customers are looking reduce or eliminate their use of VMware over the next few years, concerns over time and cost they are also expected to delay or cancel plans to move, mainly because moving would require paying for two tangible things at once.

“One of the biggest things we’re seeing is that when customers go through this journey of changing their systems, you double the revenue,” HPE EVP and CTO Fidelma Russo said. The Register.

Dean Colpitts, CTO of Canadian Managed services provider (MSP) Members IT Group (MITG), who VMware cut it from its sales program after 19 years of contract a year ago, do not expect Promotion to drive more sales.

“All of our customers work for three, four, or five years and are usually buying their first purchase,” he told Ars. “The biggest problem I see right now affecting sales and adoption of VM Essentials is (that) high prices and DRAM constraints are (impeding) customers’ ability to get new hardware to migrate.”

Colpitts also pointed to the lack of tools available for a permanent migration and “temporary management of the brownfield image of the customer’s existing equipment from VMware to” VM Essentials.

On the other hand, one of HPE’s biggest partners, San Diego-based Nth Generation, expects that “VM Essentials sales pipeline will be up to four times and sales will grow by almost as much” as a result of HPE’s promotion, CRN reported.

“These free licensing and migration features will significantly reduce the risk of migrating to VM Essentials,” Nth Generation President and CTO Dan Molina told the publication.

Peer promotion

HPE also announced that it will provide 600 reseller partners with free licenses for HPE’s Private Cloud and Virtualization software at the end of the year of free VM Essentials for three years. Sponsors are required to pay support fees, however.

Colpitts said the benefit is “the right way to go” but that restricting the promotion of 600 partners is “reckless.” He believes that HPE should provide all of its partners with VM Essentials “to help get (VM Essentials) to customer sites and eliminate competitors.”

“They need to push (VM Essentials) as fast and as fast as they (can) to get adoption quickly and attract ISVs to them, which will increase adoption by more kids,” he said.