Founded in 1998, VMware was bought by EMC (now Dell EMC) for $625 million in early 2004. When Dell took over EMC in early 2016, it caused major disruptions for VMware, leading to the termination of all US developers and the breakup of the teams working on Workstation and Fusion. By 2021, Dell and VMware ended their partnership. At the close of 2023, Broadcom purchased VMware for an impressive $69 billion. This spring, VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion became free for personal use, and now, they have extended this offer to include educational and commercial users as well.
Current Offerings
Although Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro can no longer be bought, existing users can continue to use them without charge. However, users who aren't under a commercial contract will need to accept the free-tier support model. In this scenario, VMware will not offer direct assistance to Workstation and Fusion users. Instead, if help is needed, users must rely on product documentation, knowledge base articles, and the online user community for support.
Future of Products
Fortunately, VMware Workstation and Fusion are not going away. Even though real-time assistance won't be offered, both products will still receive updates, enhancements, and bug fixes in the future.
Peter von Oven's Learning VMware Workstation for Windows: Implementing and Managing VMware’s Desktop Hypervisor Solution is currently priced at $39.99 for the Kindle version (or $14.22 for rental). For those interested in the paperback version, there is a 21% discount, making the price $43.40 instead of the original $54.99.
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