VMware Proof of Concept license keys

Products

• Global Customer Assistance
• Support Portal

Issue/Introduction

This article defines the process for Proof of Concept (POC) license program for VMware by Broadcom products. This includes partner and customer responsibility, acceptable use cases and the request process. 

Important notes:

• Proof of Concept (POC) licenses are temporary licenses that a partner or customer can request to satisfy pre-sales success criteria within customer context or environmental processes.  POC Licenses are used in conjunction with a customers success criteria to validate capability which would lead to a sale.
• POC licenses must run within a customer’s non-production environment against non-production data. POC licenses cannot be used on production servers nor to access production data.
• POC licenses do not receive support. Support cases cannot be opened against POC licenses.
• POC licenses are one-time use per customer per product.  POC licenses are set at 90-day duration from date of issue
• POC licenses cannot be used to extend contracts, provide additional capacity or bridge gaps in other license keys.  POCs are not automatically granted at the end of a trial license expiration

Acceptable Usage Examples for Proof of Concept (POC) Licenses

All POC licenses must be non-production instances using non-production data.

• Customer creates a non-production copy of data to validate with proposed solution 
• Customer POC validation needs to run within customer environment to validate customer processes, external tools or services work with proposed solution
• Customer has third-party tools they want to validate against proposed solution
• Customer wants to simulate a conversion within their environment to validate process readiness

Unacceptable Usage Examples for Proof of Concept (POC) Licenses

• Partners cannot use POC licenses on their own general environments in order to build a customer demonstration area.  If a partner has hosting dedicated to this customer’s evaluation use case, then POC licenses can be applied in that environment for that purpose for that customer then unassigned at the end of the POC
• POC licenses generated by a partner are not to be used if the customer has already expired their trial license and wants to “review” the product again.  
• Using POC licenses to build a training environment or for certification testing is not an acceptable use case - use Hands-on-Labs or individual use licenses instead
• Customer cannot use POC licenses to train new team members on the technology - use Hands-on-Labs or individual use licenses instead
• All of the following are prohibited: 
• Temporary license expansion for overage during migration, acquisition, consolidation or conversion
• Bridging renewal-support gap for production licenses
• Bridging Trial license expiration prior to purchase fulfillment

Resolution

Proof of Concept (POC) license requests are made by Partners or customers and issued directly to the customer when approved. POC licenses are good for 90-days.  Prior to requesting a POC license, it is recommended that the customer is ready to conduct the POC.

The following are recommended prerequisites for requesting POC license keys:

• Have identified business or IT need
• Have funding or budget approval
• Have a sponsor in the business or IT to confirm success
• Have resources and availability to work on POC
• Have a predetermined start/end date for POC
• An architectural diagram of the customer’s solution to be validated during POC
• Have documented success criteria to measure the success of the POC

Sample POC success criteria examples may include one or more of the following:

• The solution presented delivers the intended IT and Business objectives of the project
• The architecture proven in the solution meets production operating standards for customer’s specific environment requirements
• The POC proves that the solution is ready to move into production, as designed and implemented, with the purchase of a production license key
• Risks or considerations have been success validated by the solution to deliver the necessary outcomes
• Validate viability of solution with a clone or subset of customer’s own data for specific use cases or test conditions
• Validate solution meets IT processes and scale requirements for expected POC testing conditions

Request and Delivery Process for Proof of Concept (POC) Licenses

Partner Initiated :

• Partner validates the customer is ready to execute the POC
• Partner initiates a Broadcom Quote Request Form of the category POC and select the appropriate license keys required to validate the POC.  After supplying the additional customer information, the partner submits the form.
• When submitted, the partner’s designated distributor will process the request as a special quote at 100% discount and issue the order
• The order is automatically fulfilled and keys are delivered to the customer’s designated license recipient.  The 90-day license starts at order fulfillment.
• The designated customer contact will receive an email notification of the new license and connect to the Broadcom Support Portal where the license was delivered to perform standard license operations.

Customer Initiated :

• Customer is ready to execute the POC
• Partner initiates a POC license request in the support portal for the relevant products.
• The request is validated, fulfilled and keys are delivered to the customer’s designated license recipient.  The 90-day license starts at order fulfillment.
• The designated customer contact will receive an email notification of the new license and connect to the Broadcom Support Portal where the license was delivered to perform standard license operations.