See What You Could Save on VMware
This calculator shows exactly what your VMware renewal will cost under Broadcom's new core-based licensing, including the 16-core-per-socket and 72-core-per-order minimums that catch many IT teams off guard. Enter your host count, socket and core configuration, and licensing edition (VCF or VVF), and it compares your Broadcom costs against AltaSphere, Altanora's fully managed VMware private cloud. The result: a personalized 3-year cost breakdown and savings estimate you can use to build your renewal business case.
Estimate Your 3-Year Savings
Enter your VMware environment's size and licensing tier. We'll show your current Broadcom license cost, then compare a like-for-like hosted private cloud, AltaSphere vs. Azure VMware Solution, sized to match.
VCF is Broadcom's primary bundle (includes NSX, vSAN, Aria Operations) and is what most renewal notices default to. VVF is the lighter, compute-only tier for teams that don't run those add-ons.
Broadcom bills a minimum of 16 cores per physical CPU socket, even on smaller or older processors, plus a 72-core minimum per order overall. The breakdown on the right shows exactly how that affects your number.
Broadcom publishes no public list price. Recent quoted and reported VCF rates run roughly $250–$400 USD per core per year on a 1-year term, before volume or multi-year discounting.
Broadcom doesn't publish a contractual escalator. Reported renewal-to-renewal increases vary widely; this models a compounding high-single-to-low-teens percent annual step-up, a commonly cited planning assumption.
Your Broadcom license cost (3‑yr, software only)
$0
Reference only: you'll owe this whether you stay on-prem or move. It excludes your hardware, power, and staff time, so it isn't directly comparable to the hosted figures below.
How this is calculated
Hosted private cloud: AltaSphere vs. Azure VMware Solution
Same capacity: 0 cores across 0 dedicated AltaSphere nodes. Azure VMware Solution is priced as hardware plus a separately-required Broadcom VCF license (BYOL), while AltaSphere's licensing is already included.
$0
0% lower than Azure VMware Solution (BYOL), 3‑year, USD, 1‑year commitment pricing
On‑premises estimate assumes 1 full‑time, fully‑burdened IT hire plus owned hardware, support contracts, colocation, networking/security appliances, and backup/monitoring software licensing. Full methodology is in the scenarios below.
Get a Personalized Assessment →Estimates only, for planning purposes, not a quote. Broadcom publishes no official price list; the license figure above (USD) reflects 2026 third-party benchmark and reseller-quoted data (roughly $250–$400/core/yr for VCF, $100–$200/core/yr for VVF). Core minimums shown (16 cores per physical socket, 72 cores per order) reflect Broadcom's published licensing rules. Since Broadcom's VMware licensing changes, Azure VMware Solution is sold as bring-your-own-license (BYOL): Azure's own pricing page no longer lists public rates (gated behind each customer's Azure agreement), so the hardware rate here (USD, sourced from Altanora's internal rate card, September 2026) is combined with the same Broadcom per-core license rate used above, at the VCF/VVF default. AltaSphere's licensing is already included in its price. The on‑premises estimate is built the same way as the scenario comparisons below (hardware, support, colocation, networking, staffing, and software licensing) and excludes downtime risk, cost of capital, equipment insurance, and compliance‑audit overhead. All three figures exclude network egress, backup/DR storage and services (software licensing only is included in the on‑premises figure), and professional services. Your actual costs depend on your specific environment and negotiated terms. Request an assessment for an exact number.
What's Included, Beyond the Price Tag
AltaSphere runs on ThinkOn's Critical Compute private cloud. Verified against ThinkOn's published service terms:
Infrastructure & platform updates managed
ThinkOn manages the underlying infrastructure and updates; you manage your own applications and VM stack, not the patching, upgrades, or hardware refreshes underneath it.
Hardware lifecycle included
No capital refresh cycles: hardware upgrades and replacement are handled for you as part of the service.
24/7/365 human support, 99.99% uptime SLA
Real people, not bots, with tiered response times of 15 minutes (Emergency), 1 hour (Urgent), and 24 hours (Standard).
Independently certified
SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001/27017/27018, PCI DSS, and HITRUST, backed by a company-wide compliance program.
Backup and disaster recovery are available as a separate Data Protection add-on. They're not bundled into base compute pricing, consistent with most cloud providers. Ask your assessment specialist for DR pricing if you need it.
Two Real-World Sizing Scenarios
AltaSphere vs. Azure VMware Solution (BYOL) and a self‑managed on‑premises estimate, at two common environment sizes, in USD, from Altanora's internal rate card and public 2026 hardware/staffing benchmarks.
Scenario 1
Minimum Production Cluster
Typical fit: a mid-market professional services firm (~200–500 employees)
One production VMware environment, sized to the smallest cluster either provider will deploy. Think a regional law, accounting, or consulting firm running its core ERP/CRM and line-of-business apps.
AV36 carries less RAM per node than AltaSphere's dedicated node, so the matched Azure configuration needs a 4th node to serve the same core count. On‑premises figures are directional planning estimates built from public 2026 hardware, colocation, and staffing benchmarks, not an Altanora quote.
| Provider | Cores | RAM | 1‑Yr Cost |
| On‑Premises (estimated) | 144 | 3,072 GB | $233,280 |
| Azure VMware Solution (BYOL) | 144 | 2,304 GB | $210,305 |
| AltaSphere | 144 | 3,072 GB | $154,624 |
What's in the on‑premises estimate? One full‑time, fully‑burdened IT hire (market salary plus standard benefits/payroll‑tax load), owned hardware, vendor support contracts, colocation‑equivalent power and space, networking/security appliances, and backup and monitoring software licensing, plus the same Broadcom license rate shown elsewhere on this page. It still excludes downtime risk, cost of capital, equipment insurance, and compliance‑audit overhead, which are real but couldn't be sourced to a defensible dollar figure.
Scenario 2
Enterprise Multi-Environment (Dev + Prod)
Typical fit: a multi-site healthcare system (~1,000+ employees)
A real customer sizing exercise: separate Dev and Prod environments, sized to a combined 9,216 GB RAM requirement, the kind of formal environment separation a hospital network or multi-location health system needs for EHR and clinical systems.
RAM, not cores, was the binding constraint: AV64's lower RAM‑per‑core density drags along 144 extra cores (and their license cost) to hit the same memory footprint. On‑premises figures are directional planning estimates built from public 2026 hardware, colocation, and staffing benchmarks, not an Altanora quote.
| Provider | Cores | RAM | 1‑Yr Cost |
| On‑Premises (estimated) | 432 | 9,216 GB | $556,240 |
| Azure VMware Solution (BYOL) | 576 | 9,216 GB | $1,253,415 |
| AltaSphere | 432 | 9,216 GB | $549,585 |
What's in the on‑premises estimate? Two full‑time, fully‑burdened IT hires (realistic round‑the‑clock coverage for a nine‑node, dual‑environment footprint), owned hardware, vendor support contracts, colocation‑equivalent power and space, networking/security appliances, and backup and monitoring software licensing, plus the same Broadcom license rate shown elsewhere on this page. It still excludes downtime risk, cost of capital, equipment insurance, and compliance‑audit overhead, which are real but couldn't be sourced to a defensible dollar figure.
Figures in USD, 1‑year commitment terms. AltaSphere pricing and Azure hardware rates are sourced from Altanora's internal rate card (USD, September 2026); the Broadcom VCF license added to each Azure figure (BYOL, $350/core/yr USD) is the same default rate used in the calculator above. Scenario 2 reflects an actual customer environment-sizing exercise (Dev + Prod). Since Microsoft's public Azure VMware Solution pricing page no longer lists rates (gated behind each customer's Azure agreement post-Broadcom licensing changes) and Azure has refreshed its node hardware since this rate card was built, treat the Azure-side dollar figures as directional and confirm with a live Azure Pricing Calculator quote before using in a customer-facing proposal. On‑premises estimates assume a full‑time, fully‑burdened IT staff hire (market salary plus standard benefits/payroll‑tax load) rather than a fractional allocation (one FTE for Scenario 1, two for Scenario 2's larger multi‑site footprint), plus 2026 public benchmarks for hardware (amortized over a 4‑year refresh cycle), vendor support contracts (~11% of hardware/yr), colocation‑equivalent power and space, networking/security appliances, backup and monitoring software licensing, and the same $350/core/yr Broadcom license rate. They are planning‑grade estimates, not an Altanora quote, and still exclude downtime risk, cost of capital, equipment insurance, and compliance‑audit overhead, real costs that couldn't be sourced to a defensible dollar figure. All figures exclude network egress, backup/DR storage and services (software licensing only is included here), and professional services.
Ready When You Are
Need a Custom Assessment?
Our calculators use industry benchmarks. For a firm quote based on your actual environment, including hardware, user count, and contracts, talk to an Altanora specialist. Most assessments take under 30 minutes.