back to article Broadcom takeover deal for VMware faces no rival bids

Broadcom's proposed buyout of VMware looks set to proceed after the "go-shop" period for alternative offers expired without any rival bidders coming forward. The move could mean bad news for many customers if Broadcom follows a policy of focusing only on the needs of the largest corporate accounts. Broadcom announced its …

  1. O RLY

    Requiem for a once-great

    Here lies VMware, whose corpse is on display as it is devoured by scavengers.

    1998-2023

    ___

    Maybe the EU or another regulatory entity will save it from execution and descration.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Requiem for a once-great

      Reportedly, the EU is investigating the Broadcom-VMware deal.

      C.

      1. Nate Amsden

        Re: Requiem for a once-great

        Would expect this to be a standard practice. Though hard for me to think of a reason for them not to approve it, Broadcom isn't a competitor to VMware in any way that I'm aware of. Situation could be worse for sure. (I'd prefer it if VMware could remain independent too).

        Lots of doom and gloom from many customers I'm sort of neutral on it myself being a customer since 1999. The only products I care about really are ESXi, vCenter and to a lesser extent workstation. Don't care about NSX, vSAN, vRealize, Tanzu, VDI or any of their other stuff. Hell I haven't even thought about upgrading past vCenter 6.7 / ESXi 6.5 yet(in the past I have gone 6-9 months past EOL before upgrading). So Broadcom "shifting focus" to what VMware's top customers want seems like a good thing (though I would assume VMware was doing that already). All my VMware purchases over the last decade have been through HPE, I have opened a half dozen support cases in those 10 years, and usually the support wasn't good, so I'm happy I have a setup that is simple & reliable with a super conservative configuration.

        Moving to subscriptions and jacking up the cost doesn't sound great(perhaps they backtrack on that some, remember the vRAM tax?), but they'll still have to remain competitive. I saw some folks on reddit freaking out about their community VMUG offering(I don't think anythings been changed there yet), another thing I have never used from VMware (the free esxi license has been fine for my personal use, and modern vCenter is far too bloated for my personal use memory wise). I use workstation daily, though am still on version 15 (have a license for 16 but don't need it at this time). I have been hosting my own personal web/DNS/email/etc on top of vSphere for going on maybe 12+ years now, and before that I was using VMware GSX(aka VMware Server). Been using ESX professionally since 3.5, and was using GSX in mission critical roles prior to ESX going back to 2004.

        I keep saying(haha) last product that VMware released that I was super excited about was vSphere 4.1. Everything since has just been meh, supports newer hardware that is nice, few things here and there most of which I don't care about. I do miss the .NET thick vmware client though(I say that as someone who has run Linux on their desktop since 1998), the HTML client doesn't hold a candle to it(my delay in upgrading means exposure to the Flash client was very minimal, that was intentional on my part, though I still need the flash client to rebuild vCenter HA(rare) as HTML client gives a stupid error). Also miss the thick ESX (vs ESXi).

  2. NoneSuch Silver badge

    PROXMOX

    We've already ported over our DEV/TEST environment and if needed can pivot PROD whenever we like.

    Nice to have options.

  3. jeff_w87

    OVIRT (free) and Redhat Enterprise Virtualization are options

    I'm impressed by both depending on if you need support or not. If VMware takes a tumble under Broadcom's usual tactics, I would definitely recommend taking a look at either of these options where applicable.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: OVIRT (free) and Redhat Enterprise Virtualization are options

      I took oVirt for a test drive long ago and was impressed too.

      Nowdays I'm less enthused about oVirt since it apparently has CentOS Stream under the hood, and that's not what I want as the foundation of my VM estate.

      The oVirt folks recently sent out a survey request and I give them credit for at least recognizing that CentOS Stream might be an issue for some of their community -- there were several questions on the topic.

      I'm not affiliated with CentOS nor oVirt, but if anyone is interested in providing feedback you can find the survey online pretty easily searching for e.g. "oVirt Survey Summer 2022"

    2. Smirnov

      Re: Harvester

      I'm very interested in SUSE Harvester:

      https://harvesterhci.io

      Hopefully, by the time the VMware/Broadcom deal goes through, Harvester has matured enough as a suitable replacement for ESXi.

    3. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. Rgen

    Pray

    I am praying for the VMware employees.

    1. Mark Exclamation

      Re: Pray

      So you're not offering them anything, then?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pray

      Broadcom doesn't have a strong track record of retaining acquisition talent. Add in they require work-from-office-daily, and it isn't rocket science to figure out. The enterprise software industry is a surprisingly connected work force, and many VMWare employees have connections with former CA & Symantec colleagues. They know what is coming.

      I don't understand Broadcom. They spend billions on technology acquisitions, and then dismiss everyone who knows what to do with it. Hubris.

  5. OldCrow 1975

    VMware runs on geriatric RHEL.

    Who wants that liability and the support team that it takes to handle the bugs. That just keep coming.

    That is why VMware can not find a happy owner. It consumes all the profits of the owning company. Just ask all of the previous owners.

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