The Ultimate “Pivot”: HPE VM Essentials

April 29, 2025

  By Paul O’Dell, Partner

“Pivot” is a word that is getting a lot of use lately. It is defined in the business world as a significant change in direction or strategy, typically to adapt to changing market conditions or capitalize on new opportunities. It often involves making a significant change to the core aspects of a company’s operations, products, or services.

As everyone knows, Broadcom pivoted big time at the beginning of last year. They felt that they had enough dominance in the virtualization marketplace with their acquisition of VMware to essentially do a price pivot. As a result, most clients were forced to pay between a 2X and 10X price increase depending on what type of licensing they required. The move was so sudden it left clients with no chance to pivot themselves. And because VMware offers incredibly good solutions and deep support within its ecosystem, it was incredibly difficult for clients to consider any alternatives. PIVOTING was not an option.

Partners Were Caught Off Guard, Too

I can honestly say that the first quarter of last year was among the most difficult I have had since I started in this industry 25 years ago.  It was incredibly difficult because as a “value-add” person, I was stuck in a position where I didn’t have any answers and limited ability to add value.  Broadcom took a firm stance not only with clients but with partners, too.  Many questions were left unanswered; price increases went to clients without any real explanation. And if the client wasn’t happy (who would be?) the option was to live with it OR live without it.  Broadcom felt confident that their solution was of exceptional value and irreplaceable by clients or partners.   So, partners couldn’t PIVOT either in the best interest of their clients.

Throughout the course of last year, we explored any and all options.  We looked at Azure Stack (now known as Azure Local). We absolutely love the solution and for the right clients it makes a lot of sense. Clients heavily invested in Azure and Microsoft can certainly reap some benefit there.  However, for those not heavily invested, the cost-to-value proposition didn’t quite work out.  Why make a major move away from a core piece of your infrastructure for minor economic gain? So much of the overall technology ecosystem – back-up, DR, management applications and more – would be disrupted.  We couldn’t recommend it (or other options like Proxmox) unless the savings would have notable impact on the client’s bottom line.

Turns out Broadcom and VMware knew exactly what they were doing.  They realized a majority of companies and partners just couldn’t make the move away from their technology.   So, pricing skyrocketed and a lot of folks just had to swallow hard.

However, those of us who have been in the industry for a while have learned that all things change and the marketplace always corrects itself. (I recommend this excellent video from my brother and partner Pat O’Dell on this subject.)

HPE’s Pivot: Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Like other Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Hewlett Packard Enterprise also experienced the financial impact of Broadcom’s move. And like the innovative market leader they have always been, they set a team in motion to come up with the ultimate PIVOT for VMware customers desperate for a more cost-effective alternative.

Fortunately, HPE had already been partnering with Morpheus Data, an amazing hybrid cloud virtualization company (which is embedded in their GreenLake platform).  Then in the middle of last year, they purchased them. That acquisition enabled the development of HPE VM Essentials, a powerful virtualization management solution designed to simplify and reduce the costs of managing virtualized workloads. This solution now provides clients with the ability to manage both VMware and VM Essentials workloads in the same console, basically eliminating any inherent risk and providing a brilliant alternative for customers.

Originally, we weren’t having clients move production to HPE VM Essentials; just dabble and test.  But we now have some exciting news because that is about to change.

A Pivot in Play

There is now a massive opportunity to pivot away from VMware using HPE VM Essentials. Most clients were rushed to (new word alert) productionize their existing VDI environments out of necessity related to Covid. These were typically lightly engineered and running on (guess what) VMware, Citrix and Horizon (now called Omnissa).

At the time, that was a reasonable approach. But considering the fact that VMware is no longer inexpensive, here’s what a typical 2000-employee VDI environment entails from a VMware licensing perspective:

These figures only account for VMware Enterprise Plus, including licensing for Production and Disaster Recovery. Other necessary costs for hardware with GPUs, VDI software would be on top of that.

Now let’s look at the alternative with HPE VM Essentials, which drastically reduces the total CPUs required (you would still need other corresponding hardware and software):

Those are substantial savings, absolutely worth exploring.

Removing the Final Obstacle

Let’s look back to my earlier point about ecosystem.  VMware had a majority of the ecosystem covered especially pertaining to VDI. They owned Horizon (now Omnissa) and most Citrix deployments were done on top of VMware.  So, being less expensive is great but if you have a support issue, who do you call?  This issue is clearly the final obstacle that has given companies pause when they think about moving in a different direction.

HPE and Omnissa have worked feverishly to close this support certification gap. This will give clients comfort to know that their application is fully supported by HPE from an infrastructure perspective and Omnissa from an application point of view. This is what I perceive as the final obstacle to a true pivot away from VMware. The good news is that HPE is currently in the process of finalizing this joint certification with Omnissa to run on VM Essentials. Picture those savings without a degradation in service level. You could pay for a big portion of the project by just moving from VMware to HPE VM Essentials.

The second piece of great news is that CPP has been authorized to work with its clients on qualified POCs of Omnissa and HPE with VM Essentials. We are currently seeking out companies who have an interest in being considered for a POC; contact us immediately to see if your company qualifies.

The time has come to make a move, take the power back, derisk, deleverage, possibly productionize, certainly POC and possibly PIVOT.

LET’S GO. Let’s Pivot!