Phasing Out our Socket-based Licensing

[Gostev]

Side note on VUL: little customers with just one Physical Server (a typical DC + File Server) are forced to buy the minimum of 5 VUL
Generally they give up and look at lower end products

It would cost Veeam money to sell smaller quantities direct to such customers. So from the perspective of our business, such environments belong to Managed Service Providers (MSP). Although I don't know if customers who are looking to pay less than $400/yr for data protection will actually be able to find someone willing to manage their backups for them. So naturally, free product is probably the only realistic option for them with Veeam.

[jeff_work]

We just got our quote for VUL, and this has sent us to search for another product.
The MIGRATION cost from socket to VUL is ridiculous. Essentially the same amount as renewing our Socket cost. So to switch to VUL, we would have to pay the socket renewal fee on top of the VUL licensing.

We would be better off not renewing and paying the obscene "migration" cost and coming in as a new customer later on VUL licensing. As much as we like Veeam, after the quote we got, we are now looking at alternatives more diligently.

[Gostev]

Hmm... actually, the Migration Policy is specifically designed to be fairly cost-neutral unless it involves the product edition and/or support contract upgrade. And it is always cheaper to migrate than to upgrade your Socket license to ENT+. Which production edition do you have on your Socket license?

Normally, a huge jump that is unjustified would indicate a quoting error. As I like to say, when you get something from Veeam that makes no sense, it's very likely invalid because as a company we never do things which don't make sense... and especially things which are unfair to our customers. Which might be the reason why you like us in the first place?

In any case, do keep in mind that you always have the flexibility to stay with your Socket license, keep the same functionality you have today and pay your usual renewal fee. There's no requirement for any existing customers to make the switch.

[Gostev]

@jeff_work so the Pricing Team has looked up your current license details and entered them in the migration calculator. The result was less than half of what you were actually quoted... so perhaps it's just a mistake by your Renewals rep.

[jeff_work]

Just had a call with the Veeam folks. Seems there was a disconnect with the reseller. That said, I want to state that cost issue was NOT a Veeam thing, but rather a reseller issue. Veeam was very fair and honest when we spoke. We showed the quote that caused me to go on my rant and they were equally surprised at the number.

I am glad Veeam reached out via this forum as well as scheduling a meeting to get this resolved. Again, it seems my ire was misplaced and should have been directed to the reseller. We will likely work with another reseller on our licensing.

[MattTilford]

I must say we had similar with our license renewal. We currently have 12 sockets on Enterprise (10 in use, as Gostev says we have less hosts because they are more powerful now) with basic support and 16 instance licenses. To switch to VUL we are being quoted 2.9 times the cost of renewing the socket licenses and staying where we are. I know there is an uplift for going to the higher version but this does seem to be a lot.

Do those numbers seem right?

[Gostev]

No. The migration calculator suggests it should be around 2x in your case.

[jos32]

Hello, Im not happy either. I have 6 socket license (only using 4) with 100vm on it. The problem is majority of my vm is very small (linux) with little traffic. VUL doesent take account for this how much load is on each VM. Bigger load maybe more expensive to backup. So this is not going to work for us to switch to VUL..

You should offer a core based license.. We use 8 core cpu on each node.. So 1 socket license = 8 core should be fair for us..

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

Yes, there are corner cases with high density. As you seem to have enough socket licenses, you can continue using them. No change for you as far as I see.

A core based licensing does not solve the issue that customers run machines in clouds (Amazon, Azure, Google), want to back up physical machines or applications (many cores & sockets), want to do NAS backup (many files)... all these cannot be licensed by socket, core, RAM or any other hardware parameter (except frontend capacityб which always works but is not really liked by most customers).

Best regards,
Hannes

[jos32]

Hello.

My main concern is that this is just the first step. In one year or two you will discountinue renewal service on socket licens, and thats it..

[Gostev]

Where did you even get this idea from?

[jos32]

Sorry just what I think. But I have seen other companies just doing the same thing.. Kick the customer in the right direction in small steps.

I just want to say that Veeam software saved my compony from ransomware attack a couple of month ago.. We did a full restore from tape and everything just worked perfectly. So im grateful for fantastic software and good support, and yes It is worth it.. so thankyou for that..

[Dark-Sider]

Hello,

I also received an "unacceptable" offer regarding veeam.

We have a 14 socket perpetual veeam standard license, which has been under maintenance since we purchased it (2015 or so). We recently added a tape library to our infrastructure to provide better off-site/off-line capabilities for our backup (extended ransomware protection).

We need about 15x 10 Workload packs if we migrate (this was determined by the VMC.log). This doesn't seem like an unreasonable high amount, when going through the numbers in this thread.

I discovered that veeam can only make "good" use of a tape-library when you have an enterprise / enterprise+ license. Documentation on this matter is a bit sparse tbh.

We now have the option to either upgrade to Enterprise+ or switch to VUL.

When our lower 4-digit yearly maintenance cost is X then the offers compare as following:

Enterprise+
Upgrading to Enterprise+ (1 time fee). ~8X
Yearly maintenace from there on: ~4.2X

VUL
Socket migration to VUL : 1.1X (basically to extend maintenance for 1 additional year)
Yearly VUL Licensing: 6X

I don't see how the ability to write backups to a tape justifies these insane cost jumps. I also don't see how "existing customers" are offered a VUL rate similiar to their existing yearly maintenance fee, when it's actually 6X (!)

Edit: I just compared two SKUs:
V-VBRVUL-0I-SU1MG-00 (our migration offer SKU for VUL)
V-VBRVUL-0I-SU1YP-00 (official SKU for VUL "new customers")
The prices seem quite close.

regards,
Dark-Sider

[mark49808]

Adding to the noise here. We're also a ~50:1 or so customer and so VUL is not attractive.

Yes, we can keep the sockets we already have, concern is the next 50 "sockets" worth of hosts we have to license. That's thousands of VMs and at the new VUL pricing, Veeam simply is not an attractive option.

[Gostev]

VUL
Yearly VUL Licensing: 6X

You should ask your Veeam sales rep to double check the quote, as the migration calculator shows 3.74x outyear price for your scenario.

[Gostev]

Adding to the noise here. We're also a ~50:1 or so customer and so VUL is not attractive.

Yeah, it's impossible for VUL to be attractive with such a high density. VUL was designed to be attractive for the industry-average density of 8:1.

Yes, we can keep the sockets we already have, concern is the next 50 "sockets" worth of hosts we have to license. That's thousands of VMs and at the new VUL pricing, Veeam simply is not an attractive option.

That's fair and we fully expected there will be some customers with extreme ratios who will feel this way. However, please understand that the pricing is never designed around extreme cases like yours, but rather around typical cases. Which is why we put those extreme scenarios in the Sales people hands for case-by-case consideration. So the next time you need 50 more sockets, you'll just need to have this conversation with your Veeam sales rep and present them your use case. In the end, they have the ultimate flexibility and can even offer you the custom licensing option aka NSQ (non-standard quote) or ELA (enterprise licensing agreement) potentially. Especially if it's true that we're talking "thousands of VMs" here. I'm sure they will do everything they can to keep you as our customer.

[yakamoneye18]

I just want to share my case here and ask if I understood correctly: the "Migration Policy" for migration of existing socket licenses to VUL allows us to keep our current renewal price - is that correct, or did I missread something?

Because we just got a quote for a license renewal, and at least for the first year the price would double.
We have 3 VMWare Hosts with 2 Sockets, a total of 41 virutal machines at the moment (6.8 VM/core). Veeam Availability Suite, Enterprise Perpetual license.
If we just renew our license for this year, we would pay about 2.500€.
If we migrate to VUL, we would pay 6.100+€ - 2.500 is just the migration of the 6 cores, and then an additional 3.600 for one year subscription. Even if we ignore that we would pay more than double for the first year - subscription allone is nearly a 50% raise... So where is that sales rep that can sell me VUL to the price we would pay for socket renewal? Because our reseller can't...

Thanks

Tobias

[m.novelli]

Tobias you should renew sockets, that's all
I'm doing the same with all my customers

[Gostev]

In fact there's a better option for him, you of all should have guessed it Marco will answer later today, sorry a bit swamped.

[Gostev]

@yakamoneye18 OK so, first let's look at your current migration approach. For 40 instances, calculator shows 5394 EUR MSRP for the migration and the first year, then 3037 EUR every year thereafter. There are further discounts for 3y and 5y subscriptions. As you can see, for outyears you can actually get quite close to your current renewal of 2.500€ while getting top product edition and top support program, both an upgrade from what you have today. What's not to like here?

However, since you have under 50 instances, you could instead go with Veeam Essentials VUL instead of Veeam Availability Suite VUL. Veeam Essentials is basically SMB-focused, cheaper package of Veeam Availability Suite. But technically this is the same exact product.

[yakamoneye18]

@Gostev, thanks for your ideas. It think Essentials is nothing for us, since we plan to add multiple VMs in the next year, maybe we will need an additional host - then the Essentials license would be too small.

I got the ammount of ~6100 EUR with 50 instances - since at the moment we have already 41 VMs and a few physical hosts that we are backing up with 5 of the 6 additional instances we have. So we are already at 46 instances, which is over the 10% we are allowed to go over the booked instances.

I also understand that VUL brings us more features and better support - but as already stated here, what if we do not want/need this?

I think we will still move to VUL - with the additional host that my come next year I think the calculation could change a little bit in favor of VUL, and since we would not be able to buy additional Socket licenses for new hosts after this year, we would have to move to VUL anyway...

[m.novelli]

@gostev you should not waste your precious time calculating renewal prices and defending Veeam licensing, ask for Sales representatives to come here

your focus is Vision and Tech

Marco

[Gostev]

I hear what you're saying Marco. But I also think this R&D forum will do much better without Sales representatives

It would indeed help however if sales-related problems were not brought to this R&D forum in the first place, unless it is the last resort. Meaning, only AFTER you requested escalation to the sales management, and are keep receiving the same response that you think is not right. Our Renewals issued over 40K quotes in the past few months and even with 1 mistake per 1000 quotes, it is still a significant absolute number. So if something looks off, just push back for review, then ask for their manager to review, etc. Almost all erroneous quotes brought to me here and on Reddit had mistakes that any sales manager would have spotted.

[DE&C]

As I posted here post447702.html#p447702 the same answer from my side and some addition to this conversation.

About SMB: Let’s change the focus to customer with a small HW footprint – SMBs with many VMs on a few hosts.

Is now the VUL really more expensive or are the people just missing something? Short: It is more expensive in most of the cases if you do the longterm cost calculation. I have not seen any customer yet that pays the same price as before (not even speaking for paying less) if you do the calculation per VM.

Extrem example
The best example is a customer with 2 CPUs and 150 VMs on 2 Hosts (1 CPU / Host) for his students. A highly overprovisioned school infrastructure that works perfectly, because the VMs are only used when the classes are online. But still, they want some backups. I don’t need a calculator to tell you, that 2 Sockets compared to 150 VULs will have some cost benefit on the long run. Yes, Veeam tries to “help” for the migration. The socket licenses are still valid for 1.x years. Veeam will give “for free” the 150 VULs for the 1.x years and the customer must pay +1 year for 150 VULs. After that period, the normal VUL pricing kicks in.

post447702.html#p447702
I don't know how this matches the "greedy Enterprise-focused Veeam taxing SMB" picture you're trying to paint here

Frankly: This is at the moment what many customers think about the forced move to VUL with the associated price increase.

With that in place, we want to see how it goes over the next year, and determine the universal migration thresholds and conditions making over 90% of customers to accept migration to VUL. Then, we present the results to executive team, and (hopefully) this becomes the final version of the Migration Policy.

@Anton: I guess that you will reach the goal of 90% with the actual “strategy”. First you tried it with the friendly way to motivate to get some of the new features only with VUL and now the customers are more or less "forced" – at least that is what most of my customer think about the situation. I had a lot of talks with customers and partners (CH, DE, AT) and none of them are 100% happy, even if the customers move to VUL. Here I kindly ask to differentiate between “the customer accepts it” and the “customers are happy”.

[Gostev]

Yes, Veeam tries to “help” for the migration. The socket licenses are still valid for 1.x years. Veeam will give “for free” the 150 VULs for the 1.x years and the customer must pay +1 year for 150 VULs. After that period, the normal VUL pricing kicks in.

That's absolutely NOT how the current migration policy works. The discount on 150 VUL is for life of a customer, not for some period. In other words, "normal VUL pricing" never kicks in on those 150 VUL.

Frankly: This is at the moment what many customers think about the forced move to VUL with the associated price increase.

There's no "forced move to VUL". That is simply not true. Even in the first official Socket end of sale communication, "Do nothing: stay with your Socket license" was the first option explicitly given to all customers.

Also, I'm not sure how are your clients affected considering service providers like yourself never had access to Socket licenses in the first place? Rental licenses have been per-VM even 10 years ago (so exactly the same as VUL). Socket licenses were never available for MSP clients, EULA specifically prohibits their usage.

[DonZoomik]

You can be a service provider and a reseller at the same time.

[Dark-Sider]

Hi,

You should ask your Veeam sales rep to double check the quote, as the migration calculator shows 3.74x outyear price for your scenario.

To follow up on this:
- With the support of our vendor
- And a phone call with your sales rep
- And an e-Mail detailing our situation

We have been offered a solution that works out great for us. Thanks for caring about a small but loyal customer.

regards,
Dark-Sider

[m.novelli]

In the meanwhile, from 1 July 2022 Veeam is raising again renewal price of socket licenses, from 10 to 15% based on SKU

Good Game Veeam!

Marco

[Gostev]

And with that comment, we've officially made the full circle - and are now back to the very first page of this topic and one of my very first responses

I suggest we don't start discussing everything we already discussed here in over a year all over again pretty please!

[Deansbkk]

For our upcoming renewal we are looking to migrate from Enterprise Plus socket with Basic Support to VUL. Our quote has two line items for each 2 socket migration which are V-VBRPLS-0S-SUBMG-00 and V-VBRVUL-0I-SU1MG-00. Each line item is almost the same price.

My understanding is V-VBRPLS-0S-SUBMG-00 = "VUL Subscription + Basic Support, Migration for Ent Plus 1 Year".
My understanding is V-VBRVUL-0I-SU1MG-00 = "VUL Subscription + Production Support, Migration for Ent Plus 1 Year"

Why are we being quoted both items? It would seem we should only be quoted one or the other. Also I don't understand why V-VBRPLS-0S-SUBMG-00 (basic support) exists as Gostev mentions earlier in this thread that only production support is available with VUL.

We are in the process of asking our Veeam reseller but unfortunately it usually takes ~2 weeks to get answers (each time we ask) and then more time to get new quotes (often another ~2 weeks). Thanks!