Can We Let It Lapse - The Risky VMware Renewal Question No One Wants to Answer Too Late

# Can We Let It Lapse? The Risky VMware Renewal Question No One Wants to Answer Too Late ## The Real Question Behind the Deadline There’s a different kind of anxiety that hits when licensing deadlines creep up. It’s not the usual “budget approval” stress. It’s quieter. More strategic. More political. This time, the question wasn’t about pricing. It was about timing. A team sitting on 15-year-old perpetual on-prem VMware licenses is staring at the calendar. Support is about to expire. They already have a quote in hand for VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF). But there’s talk of M&A activity swirling in the background. Deals take time. Approvals stall. Budgets freeze. And nobody wants to commit to a subscription model if the company’s direction might shift in a few months. So the real question becomes: if we let our perpetual support lapse now, can we come back later and activate that VVF subscription when things settle down? That sounds simple. It’s not. First, let’s be clear about what’s changed. Traditional perpetual support renewals aren’t really a thing anymore. Once your support term ends, you don’t “renew” perpetual support the way you used to. The options now look more like this: run unsupported, or move to a subscription model like VVF or VCF. That’s the fork in the road. One response cut straight to it: at the end of your support term, you either go unsupported or purchase a new VVF or VCF subscription that replaces your legacy perpetual licenses . No drama. Just reality. But here’s where the nuance creeps in. ## What You Keep After Support Expires Going unsupported isn’t the same thing as being out of compliance. If you’ve already paid for your perpetual licenses, you still own the rights to run those versions. You’re entitled to patches released during your active support window. You can download them before the deadline and apply them later. That’s not some shady workaround. That’s how perpetual licensing has always functioned. The key boundary is this: don’t install versions released after your support expiration date. Once support ends, your upgrade window freezes in time. That’s a huge psychological shift. Because for years, IT teams operated under the assumption that staying under support was the responsible move. Now, some are openly considering running production environments unsupported for months — maybe longer — while waiting for corporate strategy to settle. That tells you how much the landscape has changed. ## Reseller Pressure vs Licensing Reality There’s also a strong undercurrent of skepticism about reseller pressure. One voice in the conversation warned that resellers may “say all sorts of BS essentially threatening you,” but as long as you’re not exceeding your licensed entitlements and you’re not installing versions beyond what was available at the end of support, you’re within your rights . That comment says a lot about the mood right now. Trust between customers and licensing channels isn’t exactly at an all-time high. There’s a sense that urgency is sometimes manufactured. That fear is sometimes leveraged. But this particular question isn’t about scare tactics. It’s about flexibility. If you let support lapse, can you still buy VVF later? Here’s the uncomfortable answer: probably — but not necessarily on the same terms. VVF is a subscription model. It’s generally treated as a net-new purchase, not a traditional renewal conversion . That means if you let your support expire and come back later, you’re likely just buying a new subscription at whatever pricing and policies exist at that time. That’s the part nobody can guarantee. Will Broadcom still be offering VVF in the same form? Will pricing stay where it is? Will there be incentives for customers transitioning from perpetual? Or will there be a reinstatement-style premium baked into the deal? ## Can You Buy VVF Later? There’s speculation that if you lapse and come back, you might simply purchase net-new VVF subscriptions — but possibly at a higher price that reflects a “reinstatement” dynamic . That’s not confirmed policy. It’s educated guessing based on how vendors historically handle lapsed agreements. And this is where the M&A timing complicates everything. If your organization is mid-acquisition or divestiture, locking into a subscription right now might create accounting or structural headaches. You might not even know what your infrastructure footprint will look like six months from now. Committing today could mean overbuying or underbuying. So the temptation is obvious: let it lapse. Run unsupported. Wait for clarity. Re-engage later. That strategy isn’t reckless. But it isn’t frictionless either. Running unsupported means no official ticket escalation. No new patches. No security updates beyond what you already have access to. If a critical vulnerability drops after your support date, you’re stuck unless you’ve moved to subscription. That’s a risk calculation leadership needs to own. There’s also the operational discipline required. Before support expires, you’d want to upgrade to the latest patch level available under your entitlement. Download everything you might conceivably need. Document it. Archive it. Make sure you have clean install media and offline patch bundles. One commenter put it plainly: you’re entitled to patches up to the support date. Just manually download them before the end of support . It sounds simple. But it requires planning. ## Operational Safeguards During a Lapse There’s another angle here too: third-party support. Some organizations explore firms like Park Place for support on legacy perpetual environments . That doesn’t give you access to new VMware patches, but it can provide break-fix assistance and operational guidance. For certain industries — especially those less sensitive to vendor-backed support requirements — that can buy time. But it’s not a substitute for subscription access if your roadmap requires version upgrades. What’s fascinating about this whole discussion is how measured it feels. No one is panicking. No one is screaming that letting support lapse will cause instant chaos. Instead, the tone is pragmatic. “You can go unsupported.” “You can buy VVF later.” “Just don’t install versions beyond your entitlement.” This isn’t reckless advice. It’s sober risk assessment. And that’s the bigger story here. VMware customers aren’t just dealing with pricing changes. They’re navigating structural uncertainty. Subscription models change the psychology of infrastructure ownership. Perpetual licensing felt stable. You owned something. Support was layered on top. Subscription flips that dynamic. Now access and entitlement are intertwined. ## The Strategic Tradeoff So when someone asks, “Can we let it lapse and come back later?” what they’re really asking is: how reversible is this decision? Technically, it appears reversible. There’s no clear indication that letting perpetual support lapse permanently blocks you from buying VVF later. It’s not like you’re blacklisted for stepping away. But economically? Strategically? That’s harder to predict. If pricing shifts. If packaging changes. If product bundles evolve. You’re buying into whatever the future looks like — not the quote sitting on your desk today. And that’s the part leadership needs to understand. Letting support lapse is a lever. It buys time. It preserves optionality during M&A turbulence. But it trades predictability for flexibility. In stable times, predictability wins. In uncertain times, flexibility might. The smartest move right now probably isn’t rushing to renew out of fear. It’s also not casually ignoring the deadline. It’s documenting everything. Locking down your final supported patch level. Getting written clarification from your reseller about how VVF would be treated post-lapse. Understanding whether incentives expire alongside your support term. And most importantly, aligning this decision with business reality — not just IT comfort. Because six months from now, when the M&A dust settles, the last thing you want is to discover that your “we’ll deal with it later” plan quietly became more expensive than anyone anticipated. Letting it lapse isn’t catastrophic. But it’s not neutral either. It’s a calculated pause. And like any pause in enterprise IT, what you do before and after it matters more than the moment itself.