VMware’s end-user compute community told to brace for ‘Omnissa’ shift

Cloudy hosts given short license change deadlines, customers warned of support portal brownouts

VMware by Broadcom’s breakup with its end-user compute products will enter a new phase next week, with cloudy service providers and customers both warned of imminent changes.

Service providers who offer the old VMware’s Horizon range as a service have the worst of it: an email seen by The Register advises them that they have two choices. One is to acquire licenses for VMware Cloud Foundation and fresh licenses for Horizon, a choice that won’t require architectural changes but will mean paying for Broadcom’s big software bundle that has come in for much criticism over its price.

The second option is acquiring licenses to VMware vSphere Foundation for VDI from a distributor and reselling them to clients. That path will require architectural changes.

We understand that these options were announced in recent weeks on a conference call, and gave those impacted scant time to make a choice and/or change, but offered the chance to apply for an exception.

But a more recent communication from VMware by Broadcom advised that the systems used to manage exemptions will go offline from April 30th.

That deadline left cloudy Horizon hosts with not many few working days to get their affairs in order if they wished to continue their services.

Customers, meanwhile, were last Monday told how the sale of VMware’s end-user products to KRR will affect the portals through which they access customer service and training. From April 30 to May 6, the customer connect portal used will be “limited or read-only." A learning portal will be offline entirely.

When then portals return, they’ll be branded “Omnissa” – the name The Register tipped to be the new moniker for the end-user products.

VMware by Broadcom confirmed the name on Thursday, revealing that it “originated from a rigorous process that included our employees, customers, and partners”. Those folk were asked to describe end-user computing and the word Omnissa is the result.

Apparently, the word also has qualities including:

  • Speaking to “the central role our platform plays in making digital work better for everyone”;
  • Being inspired by “a vision of empowerment”
  • Suggesting “the comprehensive nature of our platform’s capabilities and usefulness”;
  • Conveying “a sense of working calmly, with all the knowledge and insight you need, no matter what you’re doing or where you are”;
  • Being “aligned to our company purpose”, memorable, and easily pronounced.

That it was not a trademark held by anyone else probably helped, too.

An Omnissa website will debut on May 6th. The Register’s occasional LogoWatch column can hardly wait. ®

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