Broadcom is accusing Siemens of using multiple VMware products without proper licenses. This “aha!” discovery that thousands of software licenses were illegally downloaded was only brought to VMware’s attention, however, after Siemens provided a list of installed software that it insisted was “eligible for the one-year extension of Support Services,” even though some of those installs could not be associated with an active software license. Siemens had threatened legal action if it did not receive those extensions, and VMware countered with the observation of the license violations. Both sides hold responsibility for guarding legal license use, so it’s an oopsie on both sides.

The result is a legal battle certain to cost both companies millions in attorney fees and litigation costs, along with a legal discovery process that could unearth more licensing violations — not to mention potentially compromise Siemens’ ability to get support services for the duration of the lawsuit.

Pay Attention To The Details, As Mistakes Have Consequences

“True-ups” are often negotiating tools for vendors. They can start with a request for a software audit but often then lead to finding unlicensed software that the business either needs to pay for or discontinue use of. The intersection of infrastructure software, virtualization, and massive operational scale can mean large areas of unaccounted expense from true-ups where a business has no choice but to pay or disrupt the business. For example:

• IBM raked in millions from WebSphere licensing when businesses started virtualizing its WebSphere servers because the licensing was based on the software’s access to all the physical CPUs in the virtualized cluster. Until customers set up subcapacity licensing and the software agents to track it, they were on the hook for the additional licensing costs.
• Oracle customers have run into similar issues when running Oracle Database on HCI clusters due to Oracle’s licensing parameters. Efforts to get better utilization through virtualization while also avoiding these licensing issues have driven many organizations to adopt disaggregated HCI or even to create targeted smaller clusters for Oracle use.
• VMware’s licensing changes are affecting many, as the piecemeal licensing that businesses were used to is converted to a bundled platform license where they then incur the charge for platform components that they haven’t used in the past, often duplicating the functionality of existing infrastructure investments.