Omnissa: First Look at the Former VMware EUC
Our blog post Broadcom Sells VMware EUC reported on the acquisition of VMware® EUC by private equity firm KKR from Broadcom® on February 26, 2024, with the intention to turn the business unit into a standalone company.
On April 25th, the VMware EUC division officially announced its new name—Omnissa™—via a blog post on vmware.com. For sharp-eyed VMware EUC customers, however, the new name appeared prior to April 25thin the form of the renamed company’s URL.
In an April 11th VMware Knowledge Base article, VMware EUC announced that at 5 pm Pacific Time on April 30, online support for VMware EUC products—including online tools allowing user registration, license management, account management, enrollment in learning courses, and the "purchase or upgrade products" function—would be unavailable until May 6, when limited online support functions would be available at customerconnect.omnissa.com. Near full functionality would resume on May 13th, with the exception of “certain services”.
This migration timing coincides with VMware’s migration from their SAP system to Broadcom’s Oracle system, demonstrating the fact that until the acquisition is complete, VMware EUC’s operations will be tied to VMware’s absorption into Broadcom.
omnissa.com went live on May 6th. Sections of the site containing technical, deep-dive content, knowledge base, Tech Zone, documentation, and videos link to vmware.com. Given the complexity and tasks inherent in building a new website, it will probably be some time before omnissa.com will include rebranded technical content, videos, etc.—possibly not until the KKR acquisition is complete.
What information can we glean from omnissa.com?
Omnissa Products
Omnissa offers these products:
- Horizon® 8 – virtual desktop and application delivery
- Horizon® Cloud Service™ – hybrid Desktop as a Service (DaaS) platform
- Workspace ONE® Unified Endpoint Management™ (UEM) – app delivery and management to devices located anywhere
- Workspace ONE® Intelligence™ – cloud service providing analytics, automation, and insights for the Workspace ONE platform
- Workspace ONE® Mobile Threat Defense™ – mobile device protection from cyber threats
How does this product lineup compare to the VMware EUC product lineup from February 2024? In the Omnissa lineup, Horizon, Horizon Cloud Service, and Workspace ONE UEM remain, with product messaging similar to the VMware EUC product lineup.
Workspace ONE, however, is gone from the Omnissa lineup. In its place are two new products, Workspace ONE Intelligence and Workspace ONE Mobile Threat Defense, which were identified as Workspace ONE capabilities in the VMware EUC product lineup. This change makes sense as VMware EUC metamorphosizes into Omnissa. As a stand-alone company, Omnissa needs to demonstrate a strong commitment to its customers’ security, regulatory compliance, and user experience needs, with products that specifically address those needs.
In our Broadcom Sells VMware EUC post, we speculated that Omnissa may rename the product line. While that may happen over time, there’s value in sticking with familiar product names from the EUC universe in the short to medium turn; Omnissa will benefit from VMware’s efforts over the years to promote and sell the EUC products.
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Omnissa Pricing
Omnissa products are all priced as monthly subscriptions; monthly pricing varies depending on the features available in the level of subscription selected. Workspace ONE UEM offers fixed per device and per user pricing for each subscription level. Workspace ONE Mobile Threat Defense pricing is a subscription add-on priced per user. Horizon 8 and Horizon Cloud are priced per user and subscription level, with starting prices listed for each level; most levels are limited to a single deployment type (i.e., multi-cloud, single cloud, hybrid cloud, or on-premises).
vmware.com also includes Horizon and Horizon Cloud pricing and subscription levels that are identical to the information on omnissa.com. As of this writing, vmware.com’s Workspace ONE pricing information includes packaging options not available on Omnissa.com.
The licensing and pricing issues related to Horizon’s integration with vCenter and vSphere (see our post Broadcom Sells VMware EUC). appear to be resolved, at least for now. According to a May 17th Omnissa blog post. Omnissa and Broadcom “…have entered into a reseller agreement enabling EUC to offer the 'combined offering' versions of Horizon SaaS and Horizon Term SKUs with vSphere Foundation for VDI (which include svSphere, vCenter, and vSAN). This combined offering will be available in both Named User and Concurrent User license metrics and for 1-, 3-, and 5-year terms.”
Additionally, the blog states that “EUC has no plans to increase Horizon list prices beyond normal annual adjustments.”
What those increases end up to be is anyone’s guess, given Broadcom’s changes to VMware pricing, include rejecting the standard cloud services pay-as-you-go model, requiring that customers to pay up-front for three years of service based on server cores used, and increasing prices 6-12 times the current pricing. Given these changes, Broadcom’s concept of “normal annual adjustments” is a big question mark.
In fact, Broadcom recently demonstrated that its VMware pricing changes will extend to the EUC products, too. In an April conference call, Broadcom announced Horizon licensing and pricing changes for cloud services provider (CSP) partners and customers, who will have two unappealing choices:
- Buy new Horizon licenses plus VMware Cloud Foundation licenses, which means buying into Broadcom’s new, pricey pay-in-advance cloud model but avoids the necessity of implementing a new architecture, or
- Buy VMware vSphere Foundation for VDI licenses from a Broadcom distributor (CSPs would resell these licenses to their clients), which will require architectural changes.
Despite the fact that VMware EUC has launched omnissa.com, the fact remains that VMware EUC is owned by Broadcom until the acquisition deal with KKR closes—meaning that for the near future, anyone buying VMware EUC products will buy them from Broadcom, at Broadcom’s pricing and terms.
Does an Omnissa Channel Exist?
There’s no partner-related content on omnissa.com—again, not a surprise given that Broadcom ended VMware’s partner program in February 2024. Until the VMware EUC/Omnissa acquisition by KKR is final, Omnissa will have to rely on Broadcom’s channel and sales team to sell the Omnissa product line.
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