back to article Fear of the unknown keeps Broadcom's VMware herd captive. Don't be cowed

With Broadcom putting the bite on VMware customers with more abandon than Dracula in a blood bank, one has to wonder. Why hang around? Why better bled than fled? Plenty of other enterprise-class VM options are available. Is it Stockholm syndrome? Has Broadcom given the head of marketing job to the Hypnotoad? Is it that clause …

  1. abend0c4 Silver badge

    In an ideal world, this would be true.

    I was once part of a technical evaluation team that failed to recommend IBM. IBM simply worked its way up to board level and secured the contract anyway.

    In this specific scenario, it appears there are customers Broadcom doesn't really want, but the rest it will no doubt be keen to retain. The best likely outcome of a technical evaluation for the latter is some additional leverage in the negotiations for a likely inevitable final contract.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      I don't see how Broadcom can expect to be able to segment the market so neatly.

      The charges will force some customers out and prevent new ones from joining. Difficult to see how this isn't going to introduce a new generation that doesn't know VMWare fairly quickly and the know-how for migration will continue to spread amongst those who must or would like to.

      Also, as others have said, this might give the impulse to some to ditch at least part of their farms of VMs in favour of containers, where this makes sense – I know containers aren't that much different and memory, and particularly IO, will limit what you can do, but in some situations you can drastically limit your footprint this way.

      1. abend0c4 Silver badge

        With the proviso that this is complete speculation, I don't get the impression Broadcom are in it for the long haul. They might even have decided that virtualization as a technology solution (for deployment, at least) has a limited remaining commercial lifetime.

        In that event, they only have to segment the market for a limited period - long enough to make a return on their investment. And I suspect that varying the pain dial would achieve that segmentation for a while, perhaps for long enough.

        But I certainly agree that, whether it's consciously part of the plan or not, it's hard to see where new business would arise.

        1. Richard 12 Silver badge

          It's worse than that

          Certain high-up managers in Broadcom need it to appear that they may get a return eventually.

          Whether it actually does or not is irrelevant, because those managers will have moved on before the dust settles.

          So a two-year, one-off revenue increase followed by a rapid drop to almost zero is absolutely fine.

        2. theblackhand

          They spent $69 billion to acquire VMware - saying they aren't in this to recoup that investment would be unlikely.

          They aren't in this to develop VMware into a better product - they are in it to reduce operational costs as much as possible and bleed customers dry.

          Broadcom have taken the risk that customers might realize how badly they will be pillaged for ongoing support that they will instantly jump ship. I would suggest current customer behavior is to try and minimize support costs rather than jumping to a new vendor. If it takes the majority of customers 3+ years to realize things won't get better, Broadcom likely make money on their investments.

          So ~<15% loss of market share per year means Broadcoms strategy is working.

          Time-frames/market share numbers are pulled out of my butt but based on Broadcom getting around $16bn annual revenue from VMware and successfully reducing operational costs from $6bn to $2-3bn/year for the next 5 years.

  2. alain williams Silver badge

    Established vs new requirements

    I do understand that if you have something that works it might be thought preferable to bleed a little rather than face death if a migration goes wrong - especially for systems where downtime is very costly.

    But if a something new is being developed breakages are not so important, indeed expected, before it goes live. So escape from VMware should be much easier -- reskilling being a major cost, maybe also different hardware.

    I wonder how many new projects are being built on top of VMware just because of fear of the unknown ?

    1. theblackhand

      Re: Established vs new requirements

      Software isn't perfect - it has taken years to get VMware environments rock solid.

      Moving to an alternative platform will result in a few years of hardware and software tweaks to get back to the current state and in the meantime there will be a few hung VMs and other surprise outages.

      And the current infrastructure tasklist to address back logs and other business initiatives isn't getting smaller. And I won't even mention the technical debt and security piles.

      Will Broadcom really screw us if we wait one more year? Yes. Yes they will. They will screw your balls in a vice and squeeze until every last penny in your infrastructure budget is spent. And then they'll squeeze some more because it's fun and sometimes it causes money from other budgets to appear in their grubby little hands.

      So the point is move and move fast because Broadcom have 69 billion reasons to take your money.

      It's probably worth noting that Broadcoms VMware support and maintenance divisions have been pared back to the bone so even if you negotiate a few more years of licensing it's likely to deliver that bumpy, "surprise outages, new hypervisor feel anyway....

  3. Missing Semicolon Silver badge

    "Open your wallet and repeat after me: help yourself?"

    (c) Colonel Bloodnok

    1. Matthew "The Worst Writer on the Internet" Saroff

      Re: "Open your wallet and repeat after me: help yourself?"

      Isn't that MAJOR Bloodnok?

      1. Missing Semicolon Silver badge

        Re: "Open your wallet and repeat after me: help yourself?"

        Aaagh! Sapristi Spon! You are correct!

  4. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Nice argumentation

    Except for the fact that there are at least two major companies that have already taken stock of the situation and given Broadcom the finger.

    There will be more.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Everyone is asking what everyone else is doing

    As someone who used to work in financial IT, that sentence hit way too close to home. Now I feel the residual trauma. ::vomit emoji::

  6. chivo243 Silver badge
    Go

    An ex-employer

    They weren't large, my old home lab rivaled it... But it's Bye bye VMware\Broadcom, Hello N-x... If enough little people walk away?

  7. kmorwath

    "eed to consider it a networking vendor first, a storage supplier second"

    That's the real issue: Moving VMs is (relatively) simple. Rebuilding the virtual networks and the hyperconverged storage less so. Especially if you were used to use vCenter, and now have to go deep in cryptic CLI command often not well documented.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "eed to consider it a networking vendor first, a storage supplier second"

      The real cost is app certification. No company, especially enterprises are going to migration even one app without testing and organising downtime.

      1. captain veg Silver badge

        Re: "eed to consider it a networking vendor first, a storage supplier second"

        I've never got the notion of "certification". Does it work, or not? Proving correctness is something entirely different and far beyond most organisations.

        -A.

        1. JohnSheeran

          Re: "eed to consider it a networking vendor first, a storage supplier second"

          Certification is nothing more than a promise that someone will "guarantee" that it's supposed to work. IMO, certification nowadays is completely meaningless. It's just a word. It used to be (or seemed to be at least) that certification came with a list of tests and validations that someone did to ensure that something did what it was advertised to do. Now? Just a word.

      2. kmorwath

        Re: "eed to consider it a networking vendor first, a storage supplier second"

        The problem might be exactly testing a complex networking/storage configuration, and their performance. Replication it takes time, resources and expertise, especially when you need to learn a new system. If yo can get **competent** professional support, it might be easier.

  8. captain veg Silver badge

    you'll need Gartner reports like a statue needs toilet paper.

    Hmm. This statue needs a lot of toilet paper. Comes with getting old.

    -A.

  9. sedregj Bronze badge
    Gimp

    I'm migrating away

    The more I use Proxmox the more I love it. I've got 20 years VMware experience.

    Recently I discovered "qm remote-migrate".

    That will live migrate a VM from one system to another with non shared storage - ZFS at both ends. That will need an Enterprise Plus type license on VMware (Storage vMotion). It will also require a vCenter at both ends and a lot of other shite.

    Broadcom can stuff VMware up their arse. I was a VMware aficionado for 20 odd years and I am severely disaffected.

    1. JohnSheeran

      Re: I'm migrating away

      I'm with you. I've been running Proxmox at home for the last year or so and I've become extremely happy with it. I had been a VMware admin/engineer at a Fortune 100 company for the last 20+ years and was very accustom to all of the great things it does/did but I don't see the need to go back, EVER. At my company? Well, just one big sad face. :(

  10. harrys Bronze badge

    Been using proxmox for years

    If you know your way around linux then its def the way to go, less need these days as you can now do virtually everything in the gui

    Have to admit though, if i was recommending a direct replacement, xcpng is a more natural fit replacing vmware, especially for larger installs

    The lack of 24/7 proxmox support is also a problem that xcpng has

    Another biggie is thats its easier to break proxmox as its just running on top of vanilla debian whereas xcpng has a bespoke customised smaller kernel

    Either would do, why, they are both open source

    i usually walk away from anything closed source, never trust closed source never will

    the only people who benefit from closed source, shareholders and executives

    trust has to be earned, only open source allows that to happen, with closed source you HAVE to believe whatever comes out of the sales guys mouth, no questions asked

    PS NEVER played the stock market, if you have then you cant really attack broadcom, if u do its just hypocritical

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Its fine for a home lab or SMB environment but support and 3rd party support is pretty poor compared to VMWare.

  11. 0laf Silver badge
    Meh

    Naive

    I think the article is a bit naive.

    There is alway an intertia to change and to make a change when there is intertia takes more energy (or in this case money and resource).

    When your team has been cut so much there are bone shavings how are you supposed to divert resources into researching and planning a major shift of VM architecture (probably with zero budget and zero permitted downtime)?

    You need to work up the chain to ask for budget to recruit or bring in 3rd parties to carry out the work. The conversations through 8 layers of managment will take a long time and they may well decide that they'd rather pay the Broadcom tax than expand a team to do the shift even temporarily.

    Plenty of bad deals continue for years (or even decades) because there is not enough will to change

    1. CraigMac

      Re: Naive

      Coming from the migration business, I agree with you. The conscious and subconscious resistance to change is far stronger than people understand (especially management).

      To push a significant IT change takes a massive commitment and strong will from management to overcome the friction and inertia of staying as is.

      Broadcom is banking on that and is trying to balance raising the price (margins) as much as they can against losing customers. When they needlessly threw the VMware reputation to the side, they made it clear Customer Sat and Vendor Stability are now at the bottom of their priority list. I don't see any way they can recoup their investment.

      I think they've turned the knob much too far, and I'd be surprised if they keep half of their market share in two years.

  12. Cloudy Day

    The reality is…

    That this is a people issue. The people tasked with planning to migrate off VMware are the same people that have spent their entire careers honing their VMware skills.. These people drive GUIs and the command line terrifies them. They will touch their forelocks and say ‘yes boss’ when the CIO tells them to investigate alternatives, and then behind the scenes they will block, obfuscate and ridicule any Suggs that does not involve them renewing the Broadcom agreement for a further three years. ‘Too tricky not to’ they cry en masse :)

  13. cookiecutter

    Leaders?!

    I guess it would be asking too much for the idiots At the top who get paid to lead to actually....you know....lead..

  14. ReggieRegReg

    Broadcom only need to keep 20% of their customers and they make a profit from the huge hike in prices. Unless there's a set of global regulations which bans companies buying other companies and then profit gouging - what are you going to do? Broadcom have done what other companies have done but just turned the screw much, much harder.

    Check out all of your contracts - if you have an eye-watering retail price on the contract with a huge discount specified you could be next. That's how they get you - I'm not putting the price up - just removing a discount...

  15. Fido

    Deploying commercial single-vendor IT infrastructure forms a long-term business partnership with a vendor that is generally based on trust. The difficulty occurs when a takeover or buyout changes the nature of the partnership.

    A similar thing happens at smaller scales with blog sites and free software. The owner sells to a third party that subsequently monetizes the readership or inserts adware.

    The difficulty is that further regulations could make things worse. Consider, for example, when SoftBank went in to ARM-architecture monetisation mode after not being able to sell to Nvidia. All sorts of things can suddenly change the nature of a business partner.

    Since IT embeds itself so deeply into a company's business process, relying on single-vendor software does not provide the robustness needed for long-term planning. While decision makers with golden parachutes may not worry much about the future, protection of the business from disruption caused by changes in software licencing and development is an argument for open or at least owning the source.

    Said another way, switching from VMware to another commercial offering is a fool-me-twice decision.

  16. FrenchFries!

    Broadcom...

    makes great FC switches!

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