It is astounding and unforgivable how poorly the transition to SaaS has been implemented and managed. The internal systems of record on licenses and support were already a spaghetti mess, but the lack of a clear and cohesive process in how to convert a customer from perpetual to subscription (from purchase to deployment) is a nightmare that you couldn't conceive if you tried. Rather than being rewarded with their change-in-control payouts, Team Magoo should have to pay in an equal amount for the economic damage inflicted for the man hours required to sort this mess out.
7 replies (most recent on top)
Every AE seems to be pushing fixed terms for a specific (non-variable) number of licenses.
That's just perpetual rebadged as a lease.
True subscription is billed monthly and varies depending on usage.
From the channel, this is spot on. The misconception that SaaS = subscription is what plagues a ton of these renewal conversion opportunities, and the messaging and collateral from VMware hasn't helped at all.
The problem starts with the execs at VMware not even knowing what SaaS is... some think it is just a subscription pricing / invoicing method for the same perpetual SW code that has been shipping forever. Some understand it is delivering outcomes and taking operating responsibility for the platforms. Some think it is just VCPP. While many don't know and don't care as they see it as a way to pump up the valuation by assigning maintenance booked as "subscription" as SaaS... Raghu never integrated anything inside the BU's as he is a legacy product guy and didn't have the courage to tell the acquisitions to get on board the VMware ship - just let them do their thing... It's the blind leading the d-mb and now since the BC buyout, the deaf just saying nanananananananana..... A travesty really and there probably is some merit in the Gelsinger comment below although I'd be interested to see how much Dell put the brakes on a transition as he wouldn't be able to get his $$ as quickly as desired.
This is true for many traditional software vendors that were late arrivals in the SaaS market. I blame Pat Gelsinger for the denial that has led to this current situation.
This fiasco is an ongoing failure of the VMW inept leadership team. When and how Hock and the BC team can resolve this long-standing issue is yet to be determined.
Is there any product leader that has prior experience in the SaaS market? From the CTO on down, they're all VMW lifer employees who have been here most of their career.
It's completely FUBAR. I couldn't agree more
I totally agreed, we spent numerous and countless hours with the system just to get the customers SaaS environment and license up and running.
Analysis:True