Broadcom's VMware has introduced vSphere Express, a lower-cost virtualization product aimed at small- to medium-sized businesses, reversing years of channel and pricing decisions that pushed SMBs toward expensive enterprise bundles.
The move signals a strategic retreat. After acquiring VMware, Broadcom narrowed its channel partner network and shifted sales incentives toward VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), its flagship private cloud bundle loaded with features most smaller operations neither need nor can afford. SMB customers were steered away from vSphere Standard, the traditional entry point, and told it was no longer available.
The new offering will use a per-core subscription model. IT distributor TD Synnex lists vSphere Express at $9,600 annually for deployments running up to 128 cores—a flat rate regardless of actual core count, which undercuts both the VMware vSphere Foundation bundle and VCF. No official pricing from Broadcom has been disclosed.
What's included: vMotion for live migration of running virtual machines, and high availability with automated restarts for failures. A key limitation—vSphere Express manages only discrete instances, not centralized infrastructure—keeps it appropriate for smaller workloads.
Unlike vSphere Standard, which stagnated without meaningful updates for years, vSphere Express will receive regular updates aligned with VCF and VVF releases. Prashanth Shenoy, VP of product marketing for VCF, framed this as a commitment to the product's viability in its target market.
The reversal is notable. Paul Turner, VCF's chief product officer, acknowledged in September that Broadcom had incentivized its sales team to oversell VCF, admitting the company had maintained "too big a focus on VCF" in its go-to-market strategy.
The message is plain: years of forcing smaller customers up-market backfired. Broadcom's push for enterprise consolidation appears to have accelerated customer churn toward alternatives. vSphere Express is damage control—an admission that the channel-narrowing and SKU consolidation strategy of the past few years did not hold.
