VMware Exit Support Is a Priced Option, Not a Renewal
T-Mobile’s August 2023 Enterprise Order bought perpetual VMware licenses, two years of support through August 2025, and a unilateral option for a third year at $5,288,398.45 through 3 August 2026. After Broadcom acquired VMware, it refused standalone support and pushed a bundled subscription T-Mobile said it did not want. T-Mobile sued in New York County Supreme Court on 12 August 2025 (Index No. 654741/2025) for breach of contract, declaratory judgment, and an injunction. The court granted the injunction. The Appellate Division affirmed it on 14 April 2026 and sent the $500,000 undertaking back for recalculation. The option expires 3 August 2026. Support rights on the way out are a priced path, not a renewal you can assume.
That’s the problem.
The parent pack is the VMware Broadcom stay vs exit page: perpetual versus VCF, the support path, portable VCF on AVS, and third-party cover.
This is not Tesco’s channel fight. It is not Siemens sending a support list that did not match the licenses. It is support rights on the way out. You already own the software. You are leaving. The fight is whether the option you bought is still a path, what that path costs against a VCF conversion, and whether both numbers exist before the cover ends.
What the docket actually says
The verified complaint is the primary text. T-Mobile owns perpetual licenses and purchased support for the continued operation of that software. The August 2023 Order ran two years, through August 2025, and granted a one-year extension at a stated Renewal Fee of $5,288,398.45 if paid before the entitlement expired. VMware, the complaint says, had represented three years of price protection through 3 August 2026. T-Mobile says it timely exercised the option. Broadcom, as successor after the November 2023 acquisition, refused: perpetual products were end of availability, including “Stated Out Year Renewals for perpetual support,” and the alternative was a new bundled proposal at a vastly higher cost.
The estate behind that option is large. The complaint puts tens of thousands of virtual machines and more than one thousand applications on the VMware platform: network, billing, cybersecurity, emergency services, law-enforcement response. T-Mobile said it needed the option year to migrate those applications safely. Without support, it argued, patches stop and the risk is operational, not theoretical.
Justice Jennifer G. Schecter granted the preliminary injunction. On 14 April 2026 the Appellate Division, First Department, affirmed that grant. The Enterprise Order, the panel said, prevails over the master agreement’s End of Availability provision where the two conflict, and T-Mobile “may renew the Covered Offerings [which include Support Services for Perpetual Software] for one additional year by paying the Renewal Fees.” Likelihood of success was established. The $500,000 undertaking was not “rationally related to defendants’ potential damages,” so that piece was remanded. The injunction itself stood. No judgment on the merits. No settlement.
Broadcom’s public catalog after the acquisition is the opposite commercial object: subscriptions, not standalone perpetual support. VMware Cloud Foundation is what it mostly sells. AT&T and Tesco tried to exercise extended support on their own paper. Those are different files. This one is T-Mobile’s option.
VMware support rights are not a VCF conversion
Look at your own VMware file. Most SAM teams still have a row that says “owned” and a risk register that says “covered.” A perpetual license is a right to keep using a version. The August 2023 deal added two more objects: two years of support, and an option for a third. It did not buy a VCF subscription. Broadcom’s catalog after the acquisition is a different object.
If your reports collapse those objects into one status, you are reading a reporting layer, not a license position. This is not a criticism of the teams building those reports. Traditional SAM tools collect comprehensively and answer slowly. The gap is interpretation work.
Do not let the vendor frame this as “perpetual is over, here is VCF.” Do not let your own side frame it as “we are leaving, so support no longer matters.” Both sentences skip the file. Support rights on the way out are a third object: the cost of staying covered while you leave, set against the cost of converting the same estate.
Price the support path against the estate you actually run
T-Mobile’s option is $5,288,398.45 for one year. The injunction priced forced cover at that fee plus a $500,000 undertaking the appeals court has already said may be too low. None of those is your number.
Cost-to-serve is how a vendor prices an estate it no longer wants to sell as standalone support. Ticket history is how a customer prices an estate it is already leaving. Neither is a license position until your products, your term, and your ticket file sit next to both.
The complaint’s scale is why both paths are large. Tens of thousands of VMs. More than a thousand applications. Transition is easier at smaller scale. At this scale, a conversion you cannot price this week and a support path you cannot price this week leave the CIO with a headline.
Picture your procurement director, thirty days from the date the current cover ends. The vendor walks in with a VCF quote. Your file says perpetual. Support is an option you thought you had. Your CIO wants both numbers on the same page. If that answer takes three weeks of specialist reading, you have already lost the framing of the meeting.
What to cost before the cover ends
Do this in the next thirty days, as a decision pack rather than a project.
| What you produce | Why it changes the meeting |
|---|---|
| The 2023 objects, separated | Perpetual license, the support term, the option for a further year, and a VCF quote. T-Mobile’s deal was three objects. Broadcom’s catalog is a different one. |
| Support path priced on your estate | $5.29 million is T-Mobile’s Renewal Fee. Map your products, your term, and your ticket history to a number you can defend. |
| Conversion priced on current hosts | The complaint used tens of thousands of VMs and 1,000-plus applications as estate size. Your VCF number has to sit on your count, this week. |
| The date cover actually ends | T-Mobile’s option runs through 3 August 2026. Name your date. A path without a date is a hope. |
| Who can still sell the option | The New York panel held that the Enterprise Order prevails over End of Availability where they conflict. Your paper may not. Get the clause in front of counsel before the meeting. |
Can a non-specialist brief the CIO in fifteen minutes from the pack you have today? If the answer is no, you do not have VMware support rights. You have a library.
The decision layer, not another inventory
You already have discovery data and contracts in a share drive. The gap is not another inventory. The gap is turning that estate into a decision: what is deployed, what you are entitled to, which support path is still live, what VCF costs on those hosts, and what should happen before the next vendor meeting. LICENSEWARE sits on the inventory and ITSM tools you already run. It is not a rip-and-replace SAM suite. It is a decision layer: what matters, why it matters now, what should happen next. Infrastructure Mapper is the pack that turns those hosts into a topology, not a support list.
If you are heading into a VMware exit or a support-extension conversation and your current tools still need three weeks to turn “owned” into a priced path, book an Audit Readiness Review. You can also start on the free plan and run the analysis on your own data.
The question to walk in with
Do not let the vendor frame this as “perpetual is over, here is the subscription.” The right question is: what are we actually running, what does the option still grant, what does staying covered cost on this estate, and what does conversion cost on the same hosts? That is a data question, not a sales question.
T-Mobile is leaving and wants the cover to last through the move. Broadcom says the products are gone and the alternative is a bundle. The court will sort the rights. You still have to run the estate. The vendor will walk in with a number. The only question is whether you have yours first: current, defensible, and tied to the contract in front of you.
