back to article AT&T intends to quit VMware, Broadcom claims in legal broadside

Broadcom has claimed that AT&T plans to stop using VMware software, but has been tardy about making the move. The allegation appears in a court filing related to the dispute initiated by AT&T over an extension of support services that we reported on September 5. In its complaint, AT&T stated it holds perpetual licenses for …

  1. harrys

    yawn ... yesterday's news :)

    1. chuckufarley Silver badge
      Coat

      I hate to say it...

      ...but the truth is you can't take anything AT&T or Broadcom say at face value. To document the history or either companies deceptions would take an untold amount of work hours. Quite easily years of effort. Their histories speak for themselves. The sad thing is that it will be cheaper for both of them to let a judge decide the case.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I hate to say it...

        Yup. Hope they both lose.

        1. Homo.Sapien.Floridanus

          Re: I hate to say it...

          Has anybody seen Alien vs Predator?

      2. ronmanu7

        Re: I hate to say it...

        Anyone seen hear no evil, se no evil!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seen this before...

    Cheap entry level pricing. Inability to renew at the same price. Forced price increases & mandatory upgrades. Product lock in. Contracts that are cheaper to keep than they are to break. It all just seems so familiar....

    Oh yeah, normal business for Telco's like AT&T. Surely they cannot complain about this type of market strategy?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Seen this before...

      Surely they cannot complain about this type of market strategy?

      «Do not do unto me what I do unto others» I belive it went? AT&T certainly does :)

  3. Jon 37 Silver badge

    Of course AT&T are leaving VMware. That was obvious from the original filing. You don't sue a supplier to insist they provide support for 2 years, unless you plan on stopping using them before the end of the 2 years. That's just common sense.

    But migration will take time. They can't just instantly do it, although they may want to.

    So their contract has an option to extend support for 2 years. That gives them time to migrate away. They are trying to use that option.

    Broadcom are saying they offered to sell them a 5 year contract for the new version and support for that new version. Well, that's going to be insanely expensive compared to the 2 years of support (for already-purchased software) that AT&T want. Of course Broadcom are happy to offer that, and of course AT&T don't want it. It's also not what (AT&T say) the contract with AT&T says they have to offer.

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      AT&T future plans are irrelevant

      The court action is about the contract that existed. AT&T claim it says one thing, Broadcom something else.

      Whether or not AT&T might want to buy a new license in two years is irrelevant, and the judge should be considering sanctioning Broadcom for wasting court time on irrelevant filings.

      Prove that the contract supports your claim, or go away. Future plans have no bearing whatsoever.

      1. cornetman Silver badge

        Re: AT&T future plans are irrelevant

        > Whether or not AT&T might want to buy a new license in two years is irrelevant, and the judge should be considering sanctioning Broadcom for wasting court time on irrelevant filings.

        Yeah, that occurred to me when I was reading through the article. None of the included rebuttals from Broadcom seemed at all relevant to the existing contract, unless I was misunderstanding something. If I pay for someone to make me a chair and they decide not to make it for me because they heard that I didn't plan to sit on it is barmy. And they still owe me a chair.

  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Elsewhere in the filing, Broadcom claims "AT&T has admitted in writing to VMware that it can 'migrate away' from VMware software and doing so will have 'a very quick payback and strong IRR'."

    How sporting of them to let their other customers know that

    1. NickHolland

      Quick Payback and strong IRR

      yeah, that was in-freaking-credible for them to put that in the public record.

      I used to work at a Big Company, which had all kinds of training about what kind of things you should invoke the legal department over, The general process was, "if in doubt, run it past legal".

      Sounds like Broadcom needs their legal department to run stuff past Marketing and PR. Just...Wow.

      But now we also know AT&T runs obsolete and unsupportable applications. The company that basically invented much of computing...isn't even keeping stuff up to date. Sigh.

      1. Jay 2

        Re: Quick Payback and strong IRR

        I seem to recall that the AT&T of today is most definitely not the AT&T of yesteryear. They share the name and are both telcos but that's pretty much it. Off the top of my head what was AT&T (or at least their US consumer telco stuff) was broken up into several companies (the Baby Bells). And many years down the line after much buying/selling/mergers/etc one of those companies wrangled the rights to call itself AT&T.

        Slightly similarly on this kind of thing see also Atari.

  5. JustAnotherDistro

    We're losing

    So the judge is the nanny to settle a fight between these two spoiled rich boys. Then we'll have to pay the housekeeper to clean their clothes and send them back to camp, where we will pay the chef to make them foie gras, about which they will complain.

    Because, after all, we are the "customers" of these two accomplished monopolists and their prison-guard "service" contracts.

  6. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    FAIL

    Shouldn't Broadcom be concerned about customers leaving rather than going to court over how much it costs while they leave?

    "We should run an Oracle database in VMware" will be the new startup joke.

  7. Groo The Wanderer Silver badge

    The fact that you rebranded or rebundled products and services at higher prices does not mean the product or service is no longer available.

    It just means Broadcom is gouging VMWare users for every last dime they can spare and half a million more...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      >The fact that you rebranded or rebundled products and services at higher prices does not mean the product or service is no longer available.

      And you would think a mobile phone company would appreciate that

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Aren't they asking for a "support extension" ... of old out of support products that they should have moved off ages ago? And whose fault is that?

    1. Drakon

      VMware for agreeing to it and Broadcom for refusing to honour a contract they’re now bound by.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Another article suggests that it was a bait and switch by AT&T.

        https://www.channelfutures.com/channel-business/broadcom-att-bait-switch-vmware-support

        Not judging either way, but there are three sides to most stories.

  9. David Austin

    As entertaining as it is watching these two tear chunks off each other and paying through the nose for the privilege, it seems a pretty straightforward case to rule on: Is the extended support services clause in the original contract valid or not?

    Anyone brave enough to bet whether VMware or AT&T Have the better contract negotiators?

    In either case, I think VMWare have more to lose; suing your customers to Strong arm an Upgrade.. sorry, a streamlined and simplified license is really not a good look.

  10. Vulture@C64

    Broadcom doing what Broadcom does ... screwing their customers, assuming AT&T did have an option of 2 years extension, which if they're going to court over it, I suspect they did.

    AT&T might have got a discount rate for VMware for years, but they're the type of customer VMware needed to help develop the product and supply stable revenue. It was a two way street until Broadcom put the no entry signs up at one end, so I'd imagine AT&T are pretty pissed off, rightly so.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    CCP inside

    The CCP has Broadcom buy VMware to gain more access. Companies jump ship (we did) and ATT wanted to but was slow. They should stop crying and get migrating, before they have nothing to migrate.

    1. Jon 37 Silver badge

      Re: CCP inside

      Migration takes time. And they didn't need to rush, they knew they could extend their support for 2 years using the extension clause in their contract.

    2. Groo The Wanderer Silver badge

      Re: CCP inside

      So that's the "in thing" for paranoid Americans - blaming everything on the Chinese seeing as there is no more USSR to blame.

      Personally I think it takes a real coward to blame everything on "someone" instead of taking responsibility for your own screw-ups - like approving the sale in the first place.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: CCP inside

        This I agree with: "like approving the sale in the first place"

        Blame, no, being aware of posturing for a world war that the CCP has been building up to for over 20 years, yes. (yes over 20 years)

        Russia, China, I don't blame the people, I blame the government, and in these two instances it is Only 2 people to blame, one from each. All the little people like you and me, just want to live and let live, mostly.

  12. David in NL Canada

    Its not about the licenses being used....

    For those not aware of how Broadcom is changing things...

    VMware has been sold in many different bundles over the years... many of these being focused on the "tablestakes" of the VMware ESXi hypervisor and the management front-end "vCenter". Broadcom has taken a wild leap forward in how they have chosen to bundle their products. For "Large Enterprise Customers" like AT&T I would presume, the only licenses available include full product sets that many customers have NEVER used or wanted to use - NSX Network Virtualization, vSAN virtual storage array configuration capability, and even the (more often) common vRealize suite (not called VMware Aria). These are not the only products, but just some of them.

    Many of the customer I deal with are choosing alternatives and being held hostage by Broadcom, who have typically measured the "Pain" that customers would have to undergo, and simply priced their product a few dollars short of the cost of migration - something that has seen anywhere from a 4x to a 10x price increase depending on customer.

    Broadcom is predatory in their licensing practices, in my opinion, and I do hope some of the organizations big enough to do so, to look to courts to place some fairness in licensing.

    All that being said - now is the time I have been looking at Proxmox and thinking that it would only take a generation or 2 of updates to make it more prepared for "primetime" for smaller enterprises.

    1. NickHolland

      Re: Its not about the licenses being used....

      when I first saw VMware, I thought it was pretty cool tech.

      Then...I started realizing their pricing model was based on "Look how much we save you on hardware! Now pay us 80% of that. See? you come out ahead!"

      Now Broadcom's pricing model is based on, "Look how much it would cost to change platforms. Now, pay us 80% of that. See? you come out ahead!"

      Lesson: if you are running commodity HW and OSs, make sure all parts of your system are replaceable with alternative products. And make sure you can do that.

  13. Anon

    MBA PP missing a word?

    Is there somewhere an MBA training PowerPoint presentation that has missed "Don't" out of "Don't screw your customers"?

  14. DREZ

    They should move to cloud and put all of their vms on Azure or AWS. They'll beg Broadcom for their discount after running all their workloads in the cloud for a few months. It's shocking how expensive it really is.

  15. shfy70

    I will attend the VMUG in my area and publicly curse Broadcom in front of others, and will tape that and share here.

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