Broadcom is collapsing its four-tier VMware partner program down to three. The Registered tier — the entry-level designation that gave thousands of smaller resellers the right to sell VMware — is gone. Dead in the Americas and Asia-Pacific since last summer. Dead in EMEA by May.
If you run a mid-market VAR with VMware on your line card, the question is no longer whether Broadcom will thin the herd. That already happened. The question is whether you are on the right side of the cut.
What Changed
VMware’s partner program used to have four tiers: Pinnacle, Premier, Select, and Registered. Registered was the floor. Low barrier to entry, minimal certification requirements, but it gave partners the legal right to resell VMware products. Thousands of VARs lived there.
Broadcom acquired VMware for $69 billion in November 2023. Within months, the channel consolidation started. In February 2024, Broadcom invited roughly 18,000 of VMware’s 25,000+ active resellers to join the new Broadcom Advantage Partner Programme. The other 7,000 were quietly shown the door.
Then in June 2025, Broadcom announced the Registered tier would be eliminated entirely. Americas and APJ went first, effective immediately. Laura Falko, Broadcom’s global partner program leader, confirmed the timeline for EMEA: “The Registered tier will go away in May.”
That May is 2026. Two months from now.
The New Math
The remaining three tiers — Pinnacle, Premier, and Select — run on a points-based system:
- Select: 50 points (now the entry-level floor)
- Premier: 500 points
- Pinnacle: 2,000 points
Here is the part that matters for your pricing team: 70% of points come from bookings. The other 30% come from technical certifications, services delivery, and post-sales engagement. Evaluation happens twice a year, in May and November.
Broadcom has also mandated that all tiers hold a minimum number of VCF 9.x certifications. Not VCF 8. Not legacy vSphere credentials. Only VCF 9.0 certifications count for program points in the current cycle. Role-based certifications span four personas: Sales, Pre-Sales, Architect, and Implementation.
The deadline to meet certification requirements for the next evaluation period is the end of April 2026. That is less than eight weeks away.
Why This Hits Mid-Market VARs Hardest
Enterprise-focused partners with dedicated VMware practices will clear the Select bar without breaking a sweat. They already have the bookings volume and the certified staff. Pinnacle and Premier partners were never at risk.
The partners getting squeezed are the ones in the $50M to $500M range who carried VMware as one line among many. Maybe they had a few reps who could sell vSphere renewals. Maybe they quoted VxRail deals when a customer asked. But VMware was never their core practice, and they never invested in deep VCF specialization.
Those partners just lost their seat at the table.
Brian Moats, Broadcom’s SVP of global commercial sales and partners, made the strategy explicit: “We want very technical pre- and post-sales partners that can walk a customer through the VMware Cloud Foundation journey, implement and drive the outcomes.”
Translation: if you cannot deploy VCF, Broadcom does not want you selling it.
The Channel Reaction
The mood is not subtle. A Canalys survey from early 2025 found that over 60% of VMware partners reported being unhappy with their Broadcom relationship, citing “constant and poorly communicated changes to programs and strategy.”
Zeus Kerravala at ZK Research described Broadcom’s approach as “bulldozing” the existing ecosystem. Paul Nashawaty at theCUBE Research acknowledged the strategy “makes sense on paper” but warned the “long-tail impact” could mean “brand erosion and customer churn where smaller partners have been VMware’s frontline advocates.”
Gartner analyst Michael Warrilow put it more bluntly: “These partners will rush in to the waiting hands of Microsoft and Nutanix and AWS.”
And that is exactly what is happening. Nutanix, Microsoft, AWS, VergeIO, and others are actively courting displaced VMware partners with migration programs and competitive certification paths.
Meanwhile, CISPE — the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe, whose 46 members include Amazon and Microsoft affiliates — has filed a complaint with the European Commission challenging the original Broadcom-VMware merger approval and calling for an investigation into Broadcom’s licensing practices.
The Cisco 360 Parallel
If you read our analysis of Cisco 360, the strategic direction looks familiar. Both Cisco and Broadcom are moving from rewarding volume to rewarding value. Both are telling partners that box-moving without services capability earns less.
The difference is execution. Cisco spent 15 months co-designing its program with partners, built profitability tools, and gave the channel time to prepare. Broadcom gave EMEA Registered partners roughly 60 days’ notice. That is not a transition. That is a cutoff.
What to Do Now
- Audit your VMware certification inventory this week. Only VCF 9.x credentials count. Check how many certified staff you have across all four role-based personas (Sales, Pre-Sales, Architect, Implementation). If you are short, you have until end of April to close the gap. Broadcom offers free training to enrolled partners. Use it.
- Run the Select tier math. You need 50 points. Seventy percent comes from bookings, thirty percent from certifications. Pull your trailing 12 months of VMware bookings and calculate whether your run rate gets you there. If not, decide now whether the investment to get there is worth it — or whether that money is better spent building a Nutanix or Microsoft practice.
- Talk to your customers before they talk to your competitors. Displaced VMware partners create a vacuum. Your enterprise customers who depend on VMware will be looking for a certified partner whether that is you or someone else. If you are staying in the game, proactively reach out and reinforce your VCF capability. If you are exiting, have the conversation on your terms and offer a migration path to an alternative stack. Either way, do not let your customers find out from a Broadcom email.
Bottom Line
Broadcom is not being subtle about what it wants. Fewer partners. Deeper expertise. Higher revenue per partner. The Registered tier elimination is the clearest signal yet that the VMware channel of five years ago no longer exists.
For mid-market VARs, this is a binary decision point. Either invest in VCF 9.x certifications and commit to a VMware practice that meets Broadcom’s rising bar, or redirect that investment into alternative virtualization platforms while you still have time to make the switch without losing customers.
The worst option is doing nothing and discovering in June that you no longer have the right to resell the products your customers are already running.
MarginArc Academy — Free Certification
Partner program changes are one thing. Knowing how to price every deal that comes out of them is another. The MarginArc Academy teaches IT channel sales professionals how to set markup using data instead of gut feel. The Foundation certification (CCPA) is completely free.