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Exit planning

Exiting VMware after Broadcom — a planning guide for Australian organisations

A practical guide to planning your exit from VMware after the Broadcom acquisition. Termination-for-convenience, partner agreements, timeline, and what to do first if you're an Australian organisation under pressure.

Book a discovery call

If your VCF renewal quote has just landed and the number doesn't make sense, you're in the right place. This is the planning conversation we have with Australian organisations several times a week. The good news: Broadcom's own contract terms make a clean exit easier than people assume.

The first thing to know: termination for convenience exists

Broadcom introduced a termination-for-convenience clause into most post-acquisition contracts (Foundation Agreement, signed or renewed after November 2023). It lets customers walk away from VMware orders without proving breach or paying out the remainder of the term. We've covered the mechanics — including the exact contract language and the email address you send notice to — in this blog post, with the source PDFs from Broadcom preserved here.

If your contract was signed or renewed after November 2023, this likely applies to you. Worth reading the clause before you assume you're locked in.

A pragmatic Australian exit timeline

The exits we've helped run break down into four phases. Plan for 4–8 weeks for a small environment, 3–6 months for something larger.

Phase 1 — Assess (1–3 weeks)

  • Inventory of every VM, container, datastore, network policy, dependency, and operational tool.
  • Identify VCF-specific features that are actually load-bearing (NSX deep microsegmentation, Aria, VKS — Broadcom's rename of Tanzu).
  • Cost-model the replacement platform (Proxmox in most cases). Use the calculator as a starting point.
  • Decide on the storage and networking architecture for the new environment.

Phase 2 — Build (2–6 weeks)

  • Stand up the Proxmox cluster (or other target platform) in parallel with VMware. No production workload moves yet.
  • Validate HA failover, live migration, backup/restore, network reachability, monitoring integration.
  • Sign off on the build against acceptance criteria — written, not verbal.

Phase 3 — Migrate (variable, batched)

  • Migrate workloads in scheduled batches during change windows. Easiest workloads first.
  • Each batch has full rollback. Nothing is "burn the boats" until the batch is validated in production.
  • Keep VMware fully licensed and operational throughout. No surprises if a workload needs to go back.

Phase 4 — Decommission (1–2 weeks)

  • Send the termination-for-convenience notice to Broadcom (email address is in the cancellation guide).
  • Verify deletion of VMware software per the contract requirement, sign the deletion statement.
  • Repurpose or retire the VMware hardware. Most hosts can run Proxmox directly.

If you're a partner, reseller, or CSP

The dynamics are different. The termination-for-convenience clause exists on the partner-side contract too (Broadcom Partner EDI Terms and Conditions — PDF preserved here), typically with 30–90 days written notice. If you're a CSP that was booted from the VCSP programme, or an MSP serving end-customers on VMware, see our CSP page and MSP page for the version of this conversation that fits your shape.

What you should do in the next 7 days

  1. Read your contract — find the termination-for-convenience clause if your contract was signed/renewed after November 2023.
  2. Get your real numbers — request the current VCF renewal quote in writing if you don't already have it.
  3. Run the calculator with realistic host/core counts and your partner-tier discount.
  4. Book a 30-minute discovery call — no commitment, run by a senior engineer. Book here.

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