A mid-tier European investment bank facing a 4.2× VMware SnS cost increase following the Broadcom acquisition evaluated GoVendorFree third-party support as an alternative to the forced VCF subscription migration. The bank moved its full vSphere, vSAN, NSX-T, and Horizon EUC stack to TPS, saving £1.4M annually with zero operational disruption and full DORA compliance maintained.
The client is a mid-tier European investment bank headquartered in Frankfurt, with operations across 6 European countries and approximately 1,800 employees. The bank's infrastructure is built on a VMware virtualisation estate comprising approximately 1,200 virtual machines across 3 datacentres, running a combination of front-office trading applications, risk management systems, back-office settlement, and compliance data warehouses.
The VMware estate at the time of the Broadcom acquisition consisted of:
Annual VMware SnS at pre-acquisition rates was approximately £2.1M. The bank had a 3-year ELA that expired in Q4 2024.
When the bank's ELA reached renewal, Broadcom's commercial team presented two options: a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Enterprise subscription at £8.84M over 3 years (£2.95M/year — 4.2× the previous SnS cost), or a disaggregated product renewal that would require individual product renewal negotiations and would not include App Volumes and Horizon on the same renewal path as vSphere/vSAN.
Broadcom's VCF Enterprise at £2.95M/year included VMware Cloud Director, vSphere+, vSAN+, NSX+, Aria Suite, and the full HCX migration stack — capabilities the bank neither needed nor had any current use for. The bank was being asked to pay for an enterprise cloud software platform to retain access to the virtualisation infrastructure it already owned.
The bank's CTO escalated the renewal to the Group CFO. The board directive was clear: the technology team had 90 days to present a credible alternative to the Broadcom VCF subscription, with three criteria — no operational risk to trading systems, no reduction in DORA compliance posture, and a minimum 40% cost reduction vs. VCF. The team engaged GoVendorFree at week two of the 90-day window.
GoVendorFree's engagement began with a two-week technical and commercial assessment covering four workstreams:
Workstream 1 — Perpetual licence rights verification: The bank's VMware perpetual licences were confirmed as valid and unaffected by the Broadcom acquisition. All 480 vSphere EE+, 240 vSAN Enterprise, 480 NSX-T Advanced, and 400 Horizon CCU licences were perpetual. Broadcom cannot revoke perpetual licences — the bank's software asset was confirmed intact.
Workstream 2 — TPS coverage scope assessment: GoVendorFree conducted a technical review of the bank's VMware environment, documenting version levels, configuration, known issues from Broadcom support history, and any open support cases. NSX-T micro-segmentation configuration (critical for DORA compliance) was reviewed in detail to confirm TPS coverage scope.
Workstream 3 — DORA compliance analysis: The bank's DORA compliance team reviewed TPS coverage against the Digital Operational Resilience Act's ICT risk management and incident reporting requirements. TPS provides CVE patching, incident response within 15 minutes, and documented SLA — all compliant with DORA Article 5–10 ICT risk management obligations. The DORA review concluded that TPS does not create compliance exposure.
Workstream 4 — Commercial modelling: A 3-year and 5-year cost comparison was modelled: Broadcom VCF subscription vs. GoVendorFree TPS on current perpetual licences vs. a hybrid scenario (TPS for vSphere/vSAN/NSX, Citrix replacement for Horizon). The TPS-only scenario delivered the best combination of cost reduction and operational simplicity.
| VMware Component | Version | TPS Coverage | DORA-Relevant Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| vSphere Enterprise Plus | 7.0 U3 | ✓ Full | HA, DRS, vMotion, FT, host patching |
| vSAN Enterprise | 7.0 | ✓ Full | Stretched cluster, deduplication, encryption at rest |
| NSX-T Advanced | 3.2 | ✓ Full | Micro-segmentation, distributed firewall, IDS/IPS |
| Horizon Advanced | 2306 | ✓ Full | Dealer desk VDI, session recording compliance |
| App Volumes Advanced | 4.5 | ✓ Full | Application delivery to regulated workstations |
| vCenter Server | 7.0 U3 | ✓ Full | Central management, RBAC, audit logging |
| Aria Operations (vROps) | 8.10 | ⚠ Limited | Performance monitoring (not DORA-critical) |
The transition from Broadcom SnS to GoVendorFree TPS was completed in 6 weeks — within the 90-day board window. Key transition milestones:
No operational incidents were attributed to the SnS transition. The bank's infrastructure team noted that GoVendorFree's first-call fix rate on the legacy NSX-T distributed firewall issue (an ongoing Broadcom case for 4 months) was resolved within the first 48 hours of TPS activation.
The 3-year total saving against the Broadcom VCF alternative is £4.2M. The bank redirected £1.4M of annualised savings to fund a cyber resilience programme (extended SIEM capability and IR retainer) that had been deferred due to budget constraints — a direct benefit of the VMware cost reduction that was presented to the board as a dual value outcome.
"Broadcom's VCF renewal proposal was commercially indefensible — we were being asked to pay 4.2 times our previous cost for capabilities we don't use. GoVendorFree demonstrated that our perpetual licences remained valid, our DORA position was intact under TPS, and we could make the transition in weeks, not months. The £1.4M saving funded our cyber resilience programme. That outcome was not available under any Broadcom option."
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