Key Points
- Broadcom red rating – ECCO says licensing moves hurt European cloud competition.
- VMware reseller termination – partners can no longer sell VMware services under any terms.
- SAP amber status – API limits and RISE‑only AI features raise competition concerns.
What is changing
Broadcom has price hikes of up to 10× on VMware licences, ended its VMware reseller program for European CSPs, and now requires compliance reporting every 180 days that can trigger automatic degradation of virtualization workloads. The new rules also force customers to pre-commit to core counts, eliminating the flexibility that allowed overage-based pricing. Broadcom also blocks any attempts to bypass these rules through third-party tools, raising security and compliance concerns.
SAP has moved to capacity-based pricing caps on partner licences, limits data access for agentic AI, and makes new features available only to customers on its RISE with SAP platform. This shift makes it more costly to run SAP on non-SAP clouds and pushes smaller providers toward SAP’s own cloud. Customers must review their licensing contracts carefully to avoid unexpected cost escalations.
Why it matters
This mainly affects IT admins and cloud service providers who rely on VMware, as they may face sudden licence cost spikes, loss of pricing flexibility, and the need to re‑engineer workloads. The impact is most severe for mid-size operators that cannot absorb the price increases.
The changes raise concerns about market foreclosure in the emerging enterprise AI sector, potentially limiting competition and increasing costs for large enterprises. Smaller vendors may be priced out, reducing choice and innovation in the AI market. The uncertainty also makes long-term budgeting harder for enterprises planning AI initiatives.
Share your experience with VMware licensing or SAP changes in the comments below.
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