Spurs boots VMware, cites 85% licensing saving
- ID
- 20968
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 03 Sep 2026, 6:00 PM
- Fetched
- 03 Sep 2026, 6:20 PM
- Provider
- The Register
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://www.theregister.com/on-prem/2026/09/03/spurs-boots-vmware-cites-85-licensing-saving/5294139
- Source URL
- https://www.theregister.com/headlines.atom
Summary
- Score
- 6.5
- Created
- 03 Sep 2026, 6:21 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coderssaas_founders
What happened
Tottenham Hotspur replaced VMware with HPE GreenLake (OpsRamp + Morpheus VM Essentials) on ProLiant Gen12 servers and Alletra storage, citing over 85% licensing savings. CTO Rob Pickering attributed the move to Broadcom's post-acquisition bundling and focus on VMware's 10,000-30,000 largest customers, framing virtualization as a commodity whose value drops further if not integrated into a broader AI operation stack.
Why it matters
If you're running VMware and facing Broadcom renewal hikes, this is a concrete datapoint: Morpheus VM Essentials under HPE GreenLake is a viable replacement path, and the 85% saving figure gives you a benchmark for negotiation or migration planning. Pickering's framing—virtualization is a commodity unless tied into an AI/ops stack—suggests evaluating whether your hypervisor spend is blocking budget for AI infrastructure.
Discussion angle
Is the Broadcom-VMware situation pushing mid-size orgs toward HPE/Nutanix/open-source hypervisors, and what does that mean for teams who built automation and tooling around VMware-specific APIs?