Broadcom Deauthorized One of Its Own Top VMware Partners

A VMware reseller does two jobs at once. It moves licences and renewals, and it staffs the people who actually run the platform. Broadcom has been shrinking its partner base for two years, and the way it shrinks tells you which of those jobs it values.

On September 28, CRN reported that Insight Enterprises is no longer authorized to resell VMware licences or Broadcom-funded VCF Entitlement Services in North America. Insight confirmed the move in a statement. Broadcom declined to comment.

The size of the partner is the point. Insight is an $8.2 billion business, number 21 on the CRN Solution Provider 500, carrying 6,688 certified consulting and service delivery people across Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Dell, HP and Lenovo. It will finish the client-funded VMware and VCF services it has already booked through October 31.

The channel redrew itself around Insight, then cut it

Broadcom named Insight its VMware 2023 Fastest Growth Partner of the Year for North America in March 2024. In September 2025, when it culled a tier of resellers, it emailed the customers of the deauthorized partners and sent them to Insight, SHI International and Connection to keep renewals moving. In March 2026 it named Insight its VMware 2025 Application Network and Security Partner of the Year for Asia Pacific.

Seven months later the North America resale authorization is gone. Broadcom currently lists 38 Pinnacle consulting services partners in the United States. Partner counts across the VMware business have fallen from roughly 30,000 to about 18,000 since the acquisition.

The partners that can run a VMware exit are the ones being cut

Partners CRN spoke to, several of them anonymously, point at the same suspected cause. Insight was selling competing products into the VMware installed base. One channel chief said deauthorized partners are “going to try to replace VMware.” Broadcom has confirmed no reason, so treat the motive as attributed rather than proven.

The strategy is legible either way. A partner program built around VCF attach rewards partners that sell VCF and punishes partners that sell the alternative. The partners with the deepest VMware benches are also the ones best positioned to migrate an account off it. So the trimming that protects the flag also removes the crews that could run a controlled exit.

The market is already moving that way on its own. Gartner’s Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure research carries a planning assumption that 55 percent of enterprises will start proofs of concept for alternatives to replace VMware deployments by 2029, up from 25 percent in 2026. Broadcom does not break out VMware revenue, but its Infrastructure Software Group posted $8.75 billion in its third fiscal quarter of 2026, up 29 percent year over year. The money is still arriving. The customer intent underneath it is shifting.

What to do with this if you still buy VMware

If your renewals run through a partner, find out who is authorized today and who will be authorized at your next renewal date. If that partner also runs your migration practice, know that Broadcom’s own incentives now push against the work. And if you have already decided to leave, treat your partner’s authorization as a variable rather than a fact.

Three questions to ask this week. Which partner holds your VMware authorization, and is it still on Broadcom’s list? If that partner gets cut, who completes the work already under contract? And does your exit plan depend on a partner Broadcom can switch off?

Related reading. Two earlier pieces connect to this one. We covered why Broadcom cut the tool migration vendors depend on, and why Europe’s regulators are now Broadcom’s biggest VMware problem.