Phasing Out our Socket-based Licensing

[Gostev]

Very happy customer of Veeam for many years, this licensing change is a shock here.
Every aspect of the licensing change (basic support disappear, instance licensing, non perpetual licences) is a loss for us.
We may be a small customer (40 sockets) but seems like it's time to look for another product.
Thank you veeam for securing efficiently our data all these years, now time to move on

Why not just keep staying with your sockets, what exactly forces you to move on?

By the way, Perpetual contract option is not going away.

[mkretzer]

Gostev,

may i be direct - i find it confusing that your main argument is "if you don't like it, keep your old license". We purchase Sockets twice a year - we are not in a magical world where CPUs can suddenly do 300 % more every year or our IT simply does not grow as much as it has until now.
There is just no way out for customers like us - the only thing you can offer us is "pay 2,4x of what you pay now for your Veeam licenses every year just because we say so".

Again: i love Veeam, the style of comunication, the openness (and the option to discuss this issue here), support and the product - but i have never seem Veeam do something that feels so "wrong" before!

Our old storage Vendor did something similar - DataCore had an old price model where when you reached a specific capacity the maitance cost would no longer increase and you could just pay per TB. We purchased that option (because they told us, like you do now "just purchase the TBs, even when you don't need it yet, it will be cheaper in the future") and the same year they changed the licensing and this option is no longer avaiable and the TB price was suddenly twice of what we payed before as soon as we purchase 1 TB (we had to switch to the new model then)... I have never thought we would switch from a storage Virtualisation System to a classic Storage Vendor but now all our Storage is Hitachi....

Markus

[Gostev]

We purchase Sockets twice a year

Markus, what you seem to fail to understand (or perhaps accept?) that this only means you're an exception to the rule. As based on our sales data, the vast majority of our clients appear to be in that "magical world" because they either shrink their socket footprint, or best case keep it the same. And purchasing Sockets twice a year like you are literally fractions of percent.

I'm sure you understand that it would be a bad idea for ANY business to build their licensing policy based on exceptions to the rule. Instead, everyone makes decisions based on mainstream. And don't get me wrong: exceptions are not unimportant, they just need to be dealt with on a case by case basis - and this is what we're paying our field sales for in the first place.

Sure, if they (sales) do a shitty job then we might lose you or someone else as a customer, and don't get me wrong - that would suck as no one here wins when this happens. But in the bigger picture, worst case scenario we're talking about here is losing some percent of customers from a small percent of those who are already an exception. This risk is more than acceptable to Veeam as a business, comparing to what lies on the other side of the scale. Not to mention that this risk is further alleviated by us always quickly reacting to those unfortunate events of actually losing customers. It's not like our sales leaders and the Pricing Team will just sit there and watch long term customers keep leaving, because some sales team cannot come to a reasonable agreement with them. Trust me, they will react... they always do! It has always been one of our core values to take feedback in all shapes and forms, and iterate based on it quickly.

You say you have NEVER seen Veeam do something that feels "wrong" before, but then what is the reason to think this is different now with this particular change? Except the fact that it does not work for Your specific situation, of course. But if with your posts here you are truly trying to evaluate the change we're making from a more global/strategic perspective, then you also cannot look at it from your very specific angle. As that is a tunnel vision, or in other words "the tendency to focus exclusively on a single or limited objective or view".

[mkretzer]

I understand what you say and you are most likely right with the "tunnel vision", maybe its just my frustration with what sales has done until now...

Do you have any suggestion on how to escalate this with (german) sales?

[DonZoomik]

I've been laughed out of the room with VUL pricing several times, especially with clients who have no interest in Ent+ features and have one-service-per-VM mindset, resulting in sometimes 60+ VM per socket consolidation rate with ~16core Broadwells (~5y old).
IMHO it would have been fine if sockets had core count caps like VMware nowadays or just pure core-based licensing, as alternative to VUL. Clocks and IPC don't grow nearly as fast as core count and this could have been an acceptable compromise, at least from perspective of some customers.

[Gostev]

I don't think anybody here disagrees that Socket licensing provides a deal that is "too good to be true" for ultra-high density deployments, so there's really no point to keep belaboring this fact with more examples. What really matters is that such environments are exceptions and as I've said, we don't design our licensing around exceptions. Rather, we focus on mainstream prospects of our target market, and for these VUL provides a great deal - as our new license sales statistics this year clearly shows. And needless to say, these customers Veeam closes in 2021 don't run their business on production workloads which are able to function on a quarter of a core of a 5 years old CPU... you would likewise be laughed out of the room if you mentioned this being even a remote possibility to them

Now, I don't disagree that some small businesses can do such a crazy density stuff. But as you may know, SMB is not exactly the new sales focus for Veeam these days, primarily because we completely saturated this market in all geographies. Besides, about 5 years ago we saw how in longer term, such clients best belong to MSPs anyway and we've been executing in this direction ever since (this was when VSPC was born). Your sky-blue nickname tells me you are a service provider too, meaning you really should not be offering your clients to go and buy end-user licensing (whether Socket or VUL) in the first place, because this licensing approach is against EULA. On the other hand, the Rental licensing that service providers are supposed to license their clients with DOES allow for more tailor-made solutions depending on what functionality the particular client requires, specifically to address those small clients "who have no interest in Ent+ features" and are very price-conscious.

Core-based licensing, while tempting, is nothing but a band aid - because just like Sockets, it still does not allow us to license protection of the majority of workloads we support and sell these days. As such, there's absolutely no reason for us to introduce such a licensing scheme. But I explained all of this already multiple times earlier in this topic, so at this point we're just keep going in circles and wasting each other's time...

[mkaec]

Markus, what you seem to fail to understand (or perhaps accept?) that this only means you're an exception to the rule. As based on our sales data, the vast majority of our clients appear to be in that "magical world" because they either shrink their socket footprint, or best case keep it the same. And purchasing Sockets twice a year like you are literally fractions of percent.

If customers like Markus are such an insignificant share of Veeam's business, why create the ill well by blocking him from his bi-annual socket purchases? He's going to be less likely to recommend and praise Veeam to potential new customers. There is non-monetary value in having a happy customer. Why mess with that for an insignificant change in revenue by taking steps to attempt for force him into a licensing model change?

[mkaec]

I'm disappointed to see that the conversions being offered are from perpetual socket licensing to subscription VUL licensing, and that perpetual VUL is discouraged via very high pricing. Loss of perpetual licensing is a significant downgrade. I've seen vendors abuse subscription licensing to gouge with price increases. "Don't want to pay? You'll lose access to your software in X days." The check against renewal gouging is the option to keep using the old version while looking for a new solution.

[Gostev]

If customers like Markus are such an insignificant share of Veeam's business, why create the ill well by blocking him from his bi-annual socket purchases? He's going to be less likely to recommend and praise Veeam to potential new customers. There is non-monetary value in having a happy customer. Why mess with that for an insignificant change in revenue by taking steps to attempt for force him into a licensing model change?

May be you're right and he should not be blocked... this is up to sales reps to decide on a case by case basis because we're talking exceptions. What we definitely don't want though is to keep carrying this licensing option on our books, just to satisfy the rare need of a few unique customers. We really do need to eliminate this endless source of confusion from having multiple licensing options on our price list, with one of them not even letting you license protection of most workloads Veeam supports today.

Sometimes we all need to let some formerly good things which no longer makes sense in the current realities go! And yes, as we do so, we do need to take care of those who are dear to us - and ensure they can live through this change.

I'm disappointed to see that the conversions being offered are from perpetual socket licensing to subscription VUL licensing, and that perpetual VUL is discouraged via very high pricing.

While you are right that Perpetual licensing is discouraged from our marketing and positioning perspective (as this is not a good model for Veeam from business perspective and not where the entire market is moving), I can tell you that the primary consideration for VUL Perpetual MSRP was to account for massive upfront discounts expected by the same type of customers who are required to procure software on perpetual contracts.

I understand your general concern about some vendors abusing Subscription though, and I will do my best to ensure Veeam will not turn into such a vendor although honestly, the only scenario where ANY company in their right mind would do something like this is if they were acquired by a "vulture" type of VC firm after not doing well in the first place. Because any successful company can make much more money by growing their customer base instead, which in turn is impossible without happy customers.

[mkaec]

Earlier in the thread, a sample of perpetual VUL was given and it was 2.5x more than the cost of the socket licenses. If Veeam really wanted to make it an equivalent transition, perpetual VUL at an equivalent price should have been the default offer for socket customers. The main concern that has been noted is that as processor power increases, socked-based licensing allows more density without paying Veeam more money. If a true equivalent VUL were offered, then Veeam would get more money as the density increased. But it seems like they want to make up for lost time and get a retroactive revenue increase from some customers.

I feel like Veeam has done a lot to keep the rot out of support and product quality that other vendors have, but not sales. It's not a fair argument to say "we're going to subscription because everyone else is." The industry is moving in that direction by force. It's a hostile move that only customers that haven't had experiences with shady vendors don't see the dangers of.

Unfortunately, that vulture VC scenario is all too common. Can you talk to the execs and get them to put a clause in the subscription VUL terms that if Veeam is sold all existing VUL subscriptions turn into perpetual VUL licenses? That would go a long way toward creating good will and instilling confidence. I've been in that situation where VC came in and then increased the rates 50% (while cutting support and development teams deeply) because they knew they could.

[Gostev]

Earlier in the thread, a sample of perpetual VUL was given and it was 2.5x more than the cost of the socket licenses. If Veeam really wanted to make it an equivalent transition, perpetual VUL at an equivalent price should have been the default offer for socket customers. The main concern that has been noted is that as processor power increases, socked-based licensing allows more density without paying Veeam more money. If a true equivalent VUL were offered, then Veeam would get more money as the density increased. But it seems like they want to make up for lost time and get a retroactive revenue increase from some customers.

I personally agree with this and I'm pretty sure Perpetual Sockets to Perpetual VUL migration program is already in the works. Although I was convincing everyone about this for so long that I might as well be dreaming this up by now so I'd rather double check tomorrow.

I feel like Veeam has done a lot to keep the rot out of support and product quality that other vendors have, but not sales. It's not a fair argument to say "we're going to subscription because everyone else is." The industry is moving in that direction by force. It's a hostile move that only customers that haven't had experiences with shady vendors don't see the dangers of.

We're not going to Subscription "because everyone else is" but rather because it's better for our business. These days all software companies are measured by ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) metric and Perpetual licensing is sh*t for ARR because maintenance renewal is essentially optional. I would however disagree with "by force" statement as it depends on the region. At least for us, now that we still offer all possible licensing options, in NA most customers choose Subscription, in EMEA it really depends on the country but overall the majority prefers Subscription, while LATAM and APAC are still into Perpetual. However, NA+EMEA is over 80% of our total business so we can say that majority of our customers are choosing Subscription not by force, but because of its benefits (such as lower barrier of entry and no long-term commitment).

Unfortunately, that vulture VC scenario is all too common. Can you talk to the execs and get them to put a clause in the subscription VUL terms that if Veeam is sold all existing VUL subscriptions turn into perpetual VUL licenses? That would go a long way toward creating good will and instilling confidence. I've been in that situation where VC came in and then increased the rates 50% (while cutting support and development teams deeply) because they knew they could.

Sorry but I hate the idea of putting such a clause in the first place, just because it will immediately halve Veeam's valuation! The good news is Veeam is not for sale to "vulture VCs" in the foreseeable future because the business is healthy and growing, meaning there's absolutely no sense for our "growth VC" owner to sell us. Plus honestly, with the current valuation there're very few potential buyers left who can afford to pay the price in the first place. And while our owners are dead silent about this, I'm starting to suspect that the only possible future for Veeam is IPO and it likely won't be long.

[ChrisGundry]

I personally agree with this and I'm pretty sure Perpetual Sockets to Perpetual VUL migration program is already in the works. Although I was convincing everyone about this for so long that I might as well be dreaming this up by now so I'd rather double check tomorrow.

For some reason it won't let me quote your post directly...

In previous 'word from Gostev' emails and on this thread you said there was a perpetual VUL migration path. When I contacted sales I was told there wasn't, I referred them to your posts in this thread, the email you sent as well as the Veeam license policy website page where it said there was. I eventually got a confirmation that there was a perpetual-> perpetual VUL migration path, no explanation as to why they previously said there wasn't... When I got the price back it was something like 2.6x in y1 and 2.2x in yr2+, making it completely unviable to us and made no sense. I tried to query it with sales but was met by a brick wall unfortunately... The website has also now been updated to remove the mention of perpetual socket to perpetual VUL. Between the crazy price and the website change, I am assuming that Veeam don't want anyone to move to perpetual VUL, or at least not from sockets without them paying a lot more...? I get the price issue Veeam is having, but we as a current/loyal customer have no interest in subscription based licensing, Veeam are forcing our hands to make a decision in the next 12 months. When it comes time to increase our core count next we will very likely be beyond the EOS for the perpetual socket licensing and we will either have to stomach a >2x license cost increase, or look for another vendor.

[Gostev]

Yeah, at the time when we first discussed this with you earlier in this this thread, there was no official program/policy for Socket > VUL Perpetual migrations... just custom offers in coordination with the pricing team. But I'm pretty sure they started working on such migration policy recently. I will have a chance to check on this today.

Anyway, if you're talking 12+ months from now then many things will likely change in any case, since migration policies will likely have been further adjusted a few times by then based on all the feedback on their usage from the field. For example, Socket > VUL Subscription went through 4 different versions in the same time period, and each one is better than previous

[fga]

I understand your general concern about some vendors abusing Subscription though, and I will do my best to ensure Veeam will not turn into such a vendor

Hmm somewhere i heard that before...
Oh yeah. MS Office 365. Quote Microsoft: No those prices will be stable for a long time... Come 2022: Prices go up by 20%...
I'm sorry Gostev, i know you are trying your best to keep things together. But on my side i've already heared from 3 Service Providers that they have stopped selling veeam to their customers small and big and are looking for alternatives because they have had enough with the licencing shenanigans from sales

And the "because everybody does" thing... just no. I've heard this bs enough. If everybody's jumping from a bridge do you as well? All this shows is corporate greed at its glory.
Speaking of the long term things 12+ Months.. We'll see whats left then

[Gostev]

I'm happy you brought up something we can discuss that does not even have to deal with Veeam and yet shows how out of touch with reality some folks are

Thing is, that Microsoft's first price increase does not even cover inflation over those 10 years since they launched Office 365. And I'm sorry, but it's just silly to expect software prices to remain static while prices for ALL other products and services in the world increase constantly inline with the inflation or faster. With salaries in IT increasing way faster than inflation, when personnel costs is by far the biggest spend of any software vendor.

And I would be very interested to check on the real story behind those 3 service providers you mentioned, because unlike end-user licensing being discussed in this topic, our service provider licensing did NOT have any changes since its inception about 10 years ago. It has always been a workload-based system, with each workload having its own weight in points. So I can't think what "licensing shenanigans from sales" are possible even in theory there. Actually it can only be one thing: I'm 90% sure they were simply caught violating EULA, like using end-user licensing for their clients or something... they just didn't share this part with you but in that case, I can't say I'm sorry to see these particular folks go to cheat some other vendor.

[bytewiseits]

EULAs are a whole other mess for Veeam. They don't seem to be in touch with the real world (particularly smaller mixed/msp providers) and have seemingly many differing interpretations depending who you speak with.

Initially dealing with sales a few years ago when we were looking at coming across to Veeam it all looked and sounded great having a solution for both our fully-managed and non-managed customers for backups etc. We loved the Veeam backup technology and currently use it for backups of our fully managed customers, however it just seems too restrictive to allow anything else outside of a very specific usage case where we have full and direct control only etc.

Sadly after trying to work through all the sales and license information, we ended up using previous non-Veeam products for our non-managed customers so as to ensure we don't risk breaching the overly restrictive EULA and ensure that we can support those customers when needed (as is our job). These other products have no such heavy restrictions and can even be purchased in single perpetual or subscription licenses, however (technology wise) they are not as good as Veeam Endpoint unfortunately.

Hopefully things will improve in future as the Veeam backup technology itself is great, but there is definitely some disparity between Sales and Technical/EULA sometimes, even on the provider side of things.

[Gostev]

EULA is very straight-forward really. Your clients who manage their Veeam deployment (backups/restores) themselves can use end-user licensing, even if you support them occasionally when things do go wrong, helping them to upgrade etc. But in cases when you normally manage their data protection yourself, service provider licensing should be used. It's all about who is the primary user of the software, plain and simple. For example, last month I was involved in a situation where the MSP's large industrial client literally never even touched the backup console, yet the service provider had them buy end user licensing for each and every industrial site. This is what we don't want to see.

In any case, I would appreciate it if going forward we could stay on topic, instead of turning this thread into "All Things Veeam Licensing" type of discussion. It's not that we're not interested in feedback about EULA from service providers, but we have the dedicated private sub-forum just for service providers monitored by our VCSP team, so it's best to raise any such concerns there.

[JPMS]

Can you please double check and confirm for me if it's really "the same product"? From your description it sounds like you have a lower socket edition than Enterprise Plus, so migration to VUL means getting access to many more features than what you have right now. In other words, it's not different from instead upgrading your Sockets to Enterprise Plus (which would likewise result in an increase of what you're paying per year).

The problem for us is that, as an SMB (the emphasis being on the 'S' in SMB), we don't want those extra features (currently using Enterprise) and I really can't see us ever wanting them. To go from sockets to VUL we wouldn't get equivalent pricing for our workload because we have to pay for an 'upgrade' for unwanted Enterprise Plus features.

[DonZoomik]

EULA is very straight-forward really.

I didn't quite get what you meant at first with this EULA thing for end-users vs VCSP licensing. Now that it has been mentioned several times, I went and re-read EULA and I don't see it that clearly.
I think you mean this part:

3.0 Prohibited Use
You may not (a) process third party data (as a service provider), provide commercial hosting services, sell, sublicense, rent or lease the Software to another party without purchasing the specific Veeam license to do so
...

As EULA is between end-user/customer and Veeam, I don't see how this has any relation to the question of who ("primary user"?) is maintaining customer's internal backup systems. Per your interpretation, it would be illegal for MSPs to fully manage backup infrastructure of customers with end-user licensing (the industrial example), who have offloaded management to MSPs. Community edition stuff has MSP use forbidden, fine. Hosting requires VCSP, fine. But limitations like that... Veeam still gets the money, this makes no sense.
Now, I work on technical side and I'm not aware of all the sales-side details but this sure puts things in new (unfavourable) light.

[soncscy]

The problem for us is that, as an SMB (the emphasis being on the 'S' in SMB), we don't want those extra features (currently using Enterprise) and I really can't see us ever wanting them. To go from sockets to VUL we wouldn't get equivalent pricing for our workload because we have to pay for an 'upgrade' for unwanted Enterprise Plus features.

Just my input, while I get your point JMPS, my clients mostly accepted VUL once I explained that it was fairly straight forward to track their license usage. NAS backup was a little tricky for some, but the newest iteration mostly did away with that as the SMB clients __never__ have more than 500 GiB to protect in terms of file backups; those that do usually are some outlier like clients trying to protect their databases with NAS backup or some other database, which is just not a great use of this in my opinion.

I'm personally happy Veeam did away with the edition differences; it's "less" to upsell, less to explain, and far fewer complaints down the road. (Scale out repos have been an eternal thorn in my sales teams' side, as even if they don't need it our clients "want" tons of scale out repos).

Having a single product and feature list for us has made it far more simple to say "this is what you get", and then we bill future engagements on planning/implementing the features they don't think they need.

Clients tend to have phases of expansion, and such expansion become way easier when there is one less license to have to purchase/upgrade if they're already on the necessary license.

We've lost a few clients to the sockets changes, I won't lie, but by and large some careful and plain discussion has made the transition to VUL easy for SMB.

[Gostev]

Actually, you have one more great point hiding there in your already excellent post Harvey.

When we first released NAS backup, we too saw much pushback about its licensing. Small customers did not want to pay at all, and large customers thought it was too expensive (despite we honestly priced it at least a few times lower than any competitor's MSRP). But we listened to the feedback closely, monitored adoption and made changes to the product and licensing swiftly to make it work for everyone. To help our smallest customers, we changed the licensing logic to only consume a license for each "full" 250GB (now 500GB) of source data only. For SMBs, we added 1TB NAS packs they could purchase on top of Veeam Essentials limit of 50 VULs at a most reasonable price. And for large customers, we just monitored [massive] discounts our sales had to give in NAS backup deals to determine how much the majority of our clients were actually willing to pay for NAS backup, which in the end resulted us in doubling protected NAS capacity per VUL in V11.

And we used the same approach every other time when we were through policy or licensing changes: instead of getting into analysis paralysis of juggling all the conflicting data inputs due to so many different interests at play, we would rather see how our best approximation of the ideal solution performs in the real-world and adjust it accordingly. There's no reason to think we will approach this particular transition differently: we will keep monitoring and assessing the situation, take feedback in the form of new sales/renewals numbers and customer retention/churn, and implement any required policy or pricing changes accordingly.

[marshalgraham]

I'll add us to the exceptions where our annual license fees are increasing substantially. I understand incremental price increases, even if I don't like them. But we were quoted a migration fee plus an annual increase of almost 3x. While nice, we will not utilize the Enterprise features in the foreseeable future. We are a small public school and loyal customers of Veeam. It seems that Veeam is focused on the large customers at the expense of the small. If the day comes when we are required to use a VUL license and the price is not comparable, we will look for more affordable options.

[JPMS]

I presume you have hit the same issue we have. It is not 'comparable' pricing if it is still forcing you to pay to 'upgrade' to enterprise plus when you have a lower licence and don't need the additional features. @Gostev The reason we don't have Enterprise Plus licences is because we don't need those features. Going to VUL is not going to change that. I've tracked down a v10 comparison and looked through it once again and I can't see us ever needing those additional features.

[Gostev]

And that's OK. Likewise, I don't use 90% of cool features my new Sony TV has (like picture in picture), and I know I likely won't EVER use 80% of features. But it was really nice not have to sink in feature-specific model numbers when making my purchase decision, trying to decide THEN if I may need this or that feature LATER, or never at all (which is completely unpredictable in the first place). Instead, I had a very simple and quick purchase process. And I believe this is exactly what Harvey is talking about.

Moreover, using the same analogy, we're not forcing existing customers to replace their TVs to a newer and better model if the current one works for them. They won't suddenly stop working, so you can keep enjoying them for as long as you want.

[JPMS]

I think the analogy is ridiculous. When you want a second Sony TV just like your last one and you go to the shop and they tell you it's now twice the price; same size, same picture quality but you now get loads more features that you are NEVER going to use, what would be your reaction?

I'm also a bit sad that people find it such hard work to choose the most cost effective option from a selection and just want to be able to buy a single, every thing included, solution at the highest price; Veeam - the Model T Ford of backup solutions, you can have any colour, as long as it is black . When you bought your TV, you made a choice from a wide selection of models and chose something that had the important features you wanted. Sony recognise that their potential customers have different requirements (not everyone wants a 65" TV) so they offer a choice. Veeam used to offer a choice, now they only offer the 65" TV

More seriously, you say "They won't suddenly stop working, so you can keep enjoying them for as long as you want" but I don't believe this is really correct. I bought this with the expectation that I could continue to pay for maintenance and have a solution that I could continue to use with future operating systems. Whilst you have no immediate plans to stop offering maintenance for existing socket licences, there must come a point in the future when you will, as the overall percentage of socket customers dwindle. Yes, I can, and will, stick with what I have for now as it is significantly cheaper for me than changing to VULs. When the point comes that I am forced to change I will have to go down the shop and see what TV best meets my requirements!

Finally, I admire the fact that you/Veeam have been so open about this. You've engaged in a discussion and you've given plenty of warning of the changes you are going to make. You've attempted to make the conversion cost neutral for most customers even if I personally am not included in that. I can't think of any other company who has done that. Kudos to Veeam/Gostev for having this conversation even if I don't like the message!

[Gostev]

I think the analogy is ridiculous. When you want a second Sony TV just like your last one and you go to the shop and they tell you it's now twice the price; same size, same picture quality but you now get loads more features that you are NEVER going to use, what would be your reaction?

No, they just tell you that old model with limited functionality that you're looking for is no longer available for sale. In any case, I think it is just not fair to imply that V11 is the same quality/size/performance comparing to the version you have bought originally many years ago... of course this is not so?

More seriously, you say "They won't suddenly stop working, so you can keep enjoying them for as long as you want" but I don't believe this is really correct. I bought this with the expectation that I could continue to pay for maintenance and have a solution that I could continue to use with future operating systems. Whilst you have no immediate plans to stop offering maintenance for existing socket licences, there must come a point in the future when you will, as the overall percentage of socket customers dwindle. Yes, I can, and will, stick with what I have for now as it is significantly cheaper for me than changing to VULs. When the point comes that I am forced to change I will have to go down the shop and see what TV best meets my requirements!

Indeed we have no plans to discontinue socket licenses for existing customers in the foreseeable future, but of course it's fair for you to have concerns of this being a possibility sometime later. I shared my position about this earlier in this thread: from my side I will insist that we don't announce EOL of socket licenses for existing customers until we migrate most of our active customers to VUL. Which in turn requires that they see a benefit in performing this migration, as opposed to being forced into one just because at midnight their socket licenses will turn into pumpkin.

Finally, I admire the fact that you/Veeam have been so open about this. You've engaged in a discussion and you've given plenty of warning of the changes you are going to make. You've attempted to make the conversion cost neutral for most customers even if I personally am not included in that. I can't think of any other company who has done that. Kudos to Veeam/Gostev for having this conversation even if I don't like the message!

Thank you for your kind words! This has always been in our DNA, and it's there to such an extent that it directly affects all decisions we make: anything we do must make sense and be defensible in an open discussion like this. Meaning, if I myself am not confident that I would be able to defend certain decision in front of the majority of our customers and partners, then I do my best to ensure it does not go through. And if at any point my weight won't be enough, you can expect me just saying "sorry but I lost this battle internally" instead of defending some decision that I personally disagree with in a topic like that.

[aresgodofwar30]

I wanted to add my voice to the choir. VUL is not acceptable for my employer (k12 school district). I have several friends in other companies that used to be Veeam customers that have moved to Rubrik because of the increasing costs of Veeam. If socket based licensing is phased out and VUL costs are not reduced, I will also be forced to look for something else. I am curious, in what scenario does VUL make better sense than socket licensing?

[Gostev]

Normally, the two licensing types are not comparable in principle. Because VUL the ONLY way to license protection of workloads that are not running on hypervisor sockets. Which is basically ALL workloads Veeam supports today except VMware and Hyper-V VMs. There's simply no play for sockets when it comes to physical servers, desktops, cloud machines, applications, file shares etc.

However, you're probably asking about VMware/Hyper-V only environments. For these, VUL always makes better sense too with one exception: when you have a very high VM per Socket density (well above the current industry average). We have many customers who migrated to VUL (or preferred VUL for their new purchases) last year, they just don't come here to rave how VUL is going to save them tons of money going forward.

[m.novelli]

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

Marco

[Mildur]

Hi Marco

If you are a service provider who manages this customer, you can use rental licensing to only license 1 physical server agent.

If your customer wants to do everything by himself, he can use the free agent (I don‘t recommend backup product without support, but it‘s possible). But you won‘t be able to help him with any issues, because you can‘t provide services to third party when community or free licenses are used.

There is no need to get an entire VUL package.