The end of vSphere Standard on July 31, 2025, somehow passed me by.
Which is sad, because its existence was such a massive part of my life.
When I became the architect of vCenter, I saw it as an opportunity to make an impact on the world. Customers trusted VMware. And the world trusted VMware. So much of the world depended on vCenter and vSphere that I described the job as the most important job in IT.
I felt like I had been handed the keys to the kingdom and told, “Go figure it out.”
And -by-god- we did.
And the proof is 10 years later, when so many customers are mourning the end of vSphere Standard.
What was vSphere Standard? It wasn’t a bag of bits. Anyone can build a bag of bits. It was the commitment of the finest engineering team on the planet to take care of customers at all costs. At a cost even to VMware’s business.
VMware was relevant because of those 300,000 customers. It was those customers who made us irreplaceable. It was those customers that made us significant. It was those customers who allowed us to shape the direction of IT. Because we had that reach, we mattered.
Or at least I thought I did.
The number of things that we did to guarantee that vSphere Standard customers had a great experience at the expense of other customers was large.
I saw that trust as an obligation.
Folks would walk into my office and say, “Do X.” And I remember thinking, out loud and silently, that keeping our customers happy and never giving them a reason to leave was my first and only job.
And it wasn’t just me, but the entire organization. It was devoted to that customer base.
I feel a sense of loss to see the end of that relationship with those customers.
The customers aren’t small. They are real big businesses. They are businesses that relied on my team to do right by them. The idea that they are small is unfair to those companies that trusted us.
They are the guys who hugged us when we delivered the Supervisor, because we ensured he could keep his job and keep supporting his family.
When I see what happened, I feel a level of regret that maybe I shouldn’t have done what I did. Perhaps it was a mistake.
It wasn’t. It just shows you that change is inevitable.
And then I take it differently.
The outpouring of frustration from the customer base means that my team did right by you.
That for my mission: deliver stellar value, and for you to trust my team; I can declare: Mission Accomplished.
And I wish it wasn’t in your frustration that I found out.
Thank you for being great customers and trusting us for all those years.
And I do work at Nutanix 🙂 If you loved my work at VMware, you might find Nutanix worth checking out
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