VMware slaps down SAM firm over licensing claims

Virtualisation giant claims no licensing issues have been reported with DRS solution

VMware has silenced criticism of its Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) solution after Licence Dashboard claimed it could increase user licence requirements by six times.

VMware claimed that none of its 500,000 worldwide users who deploy its DRS product have ever had any problems with it and said that any software from any vendor can catch customers out if it is not controlled properly.

DRS is a feature enabled by customers or VMware partners to allocate resources around virtual machines according to business needs, and can be automated.

Last month, software asset management (SAM) firm Licence Dashboard said confusion over virtualisation deployment could lead end users to be short on software licences.

The firm pin-pointed VMware's DRS solution, and other similar technology, as prime examples of products which can increase licence requirements by 500 per cent because of its automation feature.

However, VMware's channel manager Ed Dolman (pictured) batted away this claim.

He said: "We now have more than 500,000 worldwide customers who use [our software]. Around business-critical apps [is] where we tend to see the advanced features of DRS [used]... and not a single time have any of them said that DRS has caused them a licence issue.

"What Licence Dashboard has done, with respect to them, is outline the tenets of their solution [and highlighted] that many customers do not have a SAM strategy in place."

Dolman added that virtualisation encourages better engagement between customers and resellers due to the often complex nature of the technology involved. He said he would expect VMware partners to be involved with the deployment of DRS and in actively setting SAM policies.

Over the past few months, VMware has also been at the receiving end of fighting talk from private cloud vendor Embotics, which outlined its plans to pinch the vendor's managed service provider partners as well as snare those looking to upgrade from VMware's soon-to-be axed Lab Manager product.

"We see all competition as healthy. It drives us to innovate and work with our partners better. If there is a product being discontinued [by] VMware and [partners] feel they can go to another vendor if there is no alternative, perhaps Embotics can work alongside us with that," Dolman said.

"We have not significantly weakened our offering."

Last week, VMware announced a global staff reshuffle, with 900 set to be made redundant from the company with another 1,000 joining in other areas of the business. Dolman remained tight-lipped on whether any of the redundancies would come from the UK or the channel business.