Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

Investigating the options to bring back VMTN Subscriptions!

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** Read this update, VMTN type of program brought to you by the VMUG org **

Mike Laverick started a campaign last week on the VMware Community Forums and asked for the VMTN Subscription to be reinstated, coincidentally the same request came in through the VMUG board. For those who have never heard of the VMTN Subscription program it was similar to MSDN and enabled you to run VMware software in your lab environment for a fixed yearly fee. Ever since the program was cancelled every now and then people asked for it to be reinstated. This time it is different, it is not a few people who are backing the request but so far the community thread has over 10 pages worth of comments and there are literally multiple new blog posts about this topic every day.

During the weekend I dropped my management an email about this campaign and all the traction it had within the community. Literally within minutes I had a reply. I am happy to be able to confirm that we are investigating the option to reinstate the VMTN Subscription program. Keep in mind that starting a program like this does take time and the program will need a serious overhaul. As such I cannot make any promises on when this will happen. I do want to stress that all feedback is highly appreciated, we are listening! All blog posts voicing your opinion on why this should happen are more then welcome and all comments on the VMTN thread will be read by our team.

Head over to the community thread and post your feedback:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/335123

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I love how VMware recognizes and listens to their active community.

    Looking forward to seeing the details as they are worked out.

    Thanks for the heads up!

  4. This is great.

    And still no native Mac client even though it has a ton more responses…favoritism!

    I look forward to VMTN coming back, I miss it.

  5. This is great news, really looking for to this. Hope you will be to share some output from your midnight meeting!

  6. One of the big limiting factors I face in adoption new VMware technology is the learning curve.

    This isn’t VMware’s fault; complex and cool stuff takes time to learn.

    At work, I’m leering about purchasing a new, and probably expensive, VMware product because of the time the product will sit out of production while we learn it and fit it into our environment. The 60 day trials are a help, but not enough for me to really feel comfortable dropping it into production.

    Having a subscription service for development and learning would be a _massive_ incentive for me to learn more and probably use more VMware products.

  7. Wow, this is the coolest thing I’ve heard in a while! I hope they do this. I hate having to reload my lab every 60 days.

  8. VMTN will definitely help an individual/customer to gain hands on experience on VMware products before they decide to put it in production..

  10. At work we use vmWare for a virtual infrastructure, we have about 60% of oir server base virtualized and working on converting the rest; we are 6 system engineers who talk to many people about this technology and how useful it is and easy to manage(once you know how to do it). A couple of other SE have implemented this or at least startet conversation with their VARs about it. Work time is not enough to lear new features you have to do it on your own time; this is when VMTN comes in. (But I don’t need to tell you that) bring VMTN back.

  12. Well a years gone by and I think that proves that VMware have no intention of bringing the subscription back, as people will look at Microsofts product as it will be forced on them by the bean counters . I would be happy will the essentials plus for 250 pounds a year that had a 10 user view package tacked on

  13. Hi Duncan,

    Another month goes past and still no annoucement, the silence of VMware says it all , this is well over a year and wouldnt look so bad it they hade not had the product before

    Regards,

    Tim

      • Hi Duncan

        Mike Laverick has stated on the Community thread about VMTN that : “it looks like the vmtn subscription idea is off the table”. ( see here: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/335123?start=300&tstart=0). Do you know if there is any official response going to come from VMware to confirm this?

        If what Mike says is true, then that’s a pretty disappointing outcome. I really don’t understand why VMware don’t recognise the value of geeks evangelising about their products…both to their employers and to their fellow peers. In my opinion, home labs are the perfect enabler for this – more so than the likes of Project Nee can provide.

  14. Hi Duncan,

    If the link to Nathan has put up is true then it makes VMware look bad, even the bigger companies are looking at Hyper-V now and its part of our SA enterprise agreement (So already paid for) for the smaller companies its a no brainer as the Essentails Plus product is too expensive at £1500 . This is very EMC and we only deal with fortune 500 companies (and what happens when all those companies have the product and stop buying) even if the trial version went out to 180 days it would by an inprovement

    Regards,

    Tim

    Tim

  15. Started in 2011 – it’s now half way through 2014 with no signs of life and still the call goes out. So is there anybody there? Are they still listening to us?