End of Availability

VMware announced the end of availability (“EOA”) of VMware ACE. This discontinuation is effective on December 31, 2011. No further orders for VMware ACE will be accepted after this date. VMware announced that all technical support and maintenance services for VMware ACE will cease on December 31, 2013 (“EOSL Date”).

See KB article 2009759

You will not be able to purchase VMware ACE Licenses after 12/31/2011.

You may continue to obtain technical support and maintenance for the VMware ACE product up until the EOSL date if you have a currently active VMware Support & Subscription service contract. You should continue to use the same support tools and methods for logging support cases.

If you have an active VMware Support & Subscription contract for VMware ACE that expires after the EOSL Date, VMware or your VMware Reseller representative will contact you regarding the unused portion of your contract.

Yes. You may use ACE for as long as the product continues to run. There is no licensing restriction that would prevent you from running your VMware ACE deployment indefinitely. There may be new operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 8 or hardware changes such as USB 3 that may prevent VMware ACE from working, so your timeframe may be determined by your rate of adoption of new technology and by the VMware ACE features you use.

While a small number of customers found value using VMware ACE, the product did not meet the needs of a broader market. The customer demand for ACE no longer justifies VMware’s continued investment in product development, testing and technical support.

The decision to discontinue investment in VMware ACE was recently made after much thoughtful consideration. In 2010, VMware released VMware ACE 2.7 which contained a large number of new features and performance improvements, including Microsoft Windows 7 and Aero graphics support, to increase product adoption. After reviewing customer adoption and careful analysis over the past year, we decided that we could no longer continue to invest in VMware ACE.

There is no upgrade or migration path from VMware ACE to another VMware product. VMware’s current product portfolio does not include a product that is sufficiently similar to VMware ACE. VMware ACE customers should contact their VMware representative to suggest alternative solutions if their specific needs have changed. For example, VMware ACE customers interested in managing corporate desktops should consider Horizon View.

VMware ACE 2.7.5 which was released on October 4, 2011 is the last update of VMware ACE. At this time VMware does not plan to release any further updates.

If you have any additional questions regarding your existing VMware ACE license(s) or support entitlements, please contact your VMware or VMware Reseller representative.