AT&T sues Broadcom for refusing to renew perpetual license support

AT&T filed a lawsuit against Broadcom on August 29 accusing it of seeking to “retroactively change existing VMware contracts to match its new corporate strategy.” The lawsuit, spotted by Channel Futures, concerns claims that Broadcom is not letting AT&T renew support services for previously purchased perpetual VMware software licenses unless AT&T meets certain conditions.

Broadcom closed its $61 billion VMware acquisition in November and swiftly enacted sweeping changes. For example, in December, Broadcom announced the end of VMware perpetual license sales in favor of subscriptions of bundled products. Combined with higher core requirements per CPU subscription, complaints ensued that VMware was getting more expensive to work with.

AT&T uses VMware software to run 75,000 virtual machines (VMs) across about 8,600 servers, per the complaint filed at the Supreme Court of the State of New York [PDF]. It reportedly uses the VMs to support customer service operations and for operations management efficiency.