VMware price hikes? Between 800 and 1,500%, claim Euro customers Broadcom has upped VMware licensing costs by between eight to 15 times since it took over the organization, and a lack of alternatives in the tech industry means trade and end customers have no choice but to play ball. This is the according to the European Cloud Competition Observatory (ECCO), an independent body formed by …
No, they were caught by not being able to move to a different VM solution fast enough.
If they are sensible they will sign the 3 year deal, with the 30% or 50% discount (ie paying for 2 or 1½ years new prices but 7½ to 2½ times old prices) and use the 3 years to move away from VMware.
I agree. I would have thought most organisations can do that in three years. VMWare will be pretty dead then as revenue (no matter how much more Broadcom hikes) will plummet following the mass exodus. Which implies Broadcom plan to take the money and run means anybody still on VMWare may be moving into no-dev/support land.
They will be more than cuck.
We received a "Cease and Desist" letter from Broadcom giving us ten days to stop using their products.
This while we were in discussion with them (through our vendor) to renew our licenses. The vendor was not getting any info back from Broadcom despite numerous calls and emails. Then we were told, we could not reduce to what we were actually using; we had to renew on the same terms as the previous contract. Take it or leave it.
How they can treat long standing customers like that is mind-boggling and expect good things is mind boggling.
I suspect its people at the top with all the shares. They look at the assets of the company and the subs. Know that its will take time for people to move away from VMWare so put in these demands not caring if they loose customers. Because they know they make their quick several million and that once everyone moves off VMWare, they'll just sell the IP. So they win either way and care no shits about customers or loyal customers.
No, they were caught by not being able to move to a different VM solution fast enough.
People here are forgetting that VMware still is the best virtualization platform, and has a great ecosystem. Select any server, storage or backup platform and it will have full support with features specific to VMware.
My employer makes more profit in a single hour than what the current licenses cost. In our case it would be madness to move into something else since there's always downtime and risk associated with the move.
Earlier AC here.
If the competition gets better than VMware then there's a valid reason to replace it. But so far we're fine since the products is good quality and we can easily afford it.
I understand that people are upset by Broadcom, and the prices may be unbearable for many smaller businesses, but not everyone chooses their tools based only on the price - some choose them based on value.
Also, vampires, darkness, blood, corpses? I thought we were all adults here.
Other things to consider.
If you can take the price rises great, but remember, Broadcom has cut off a lot of resources from home labs/self learners.
This will start to make staff availability harder as the years drift by.
VMWare is on the path to be a legacy technology, it will be like mainframe technology. Still super reliable but no one is interested in this.
Also you do have to ask yourself how many 3rd party software and maybe more importantly Hardware vendors will be interested in supporting
this if market share starts to disappear. Could we see a day with Broadcom's own hardware being required because of it being too hard for them to support
from every server vendor? This isn't Linux they have to maintain their own kernel.
These aren't going to be a problem now, but looking out 5-10 years ? Not so long in enterprise terms.
This was a dynamic ecosystem, it isn't now.
All I'd say, just keep your eyes open and look beyond today's value provided to ensure you don't get technologically marooned.
Thanks for a meaningful reply instead of just pressing thumb down button without telling why!
VMware could be on its way to dodo but that's something that will take at least a decade before it reaches the "mainframe status" as you eloquently put it.
Either way, the migration from VMware to some other virtualization environment is not going to be any more harder or expensive than it is now. I would actually expect the competition to evolve and gain code maturity and better migration tools.
If you can take the price rises great, but remember, Broadcom has cut off a lot of resources from home labs/self learners
The taking away ESXi even if it came back later raised blood pressure for many. On the other hand, the VMware Workstation price was made free for home users.
This is quite an astounding article about price gouging by a monopoly.
Is someone being greedy ?
The article states :
".....and rationalized the portfolio into a few large bundles that are only available on subscription with a three-year minimum commitment."
Also, the article states :
"....It goes on to say that when customers agree to three-year fixed contracts, Broadcom entertains discounts of 30 to 50 percent on the price hike."
This does not seem to make sense. If all you can get is a 3 year contract, then why offer discounts for taking that option ?
Are they trying the game of "You are too stooopid to realise the true cost of 30% to 50% less, but we do it that way to make you feel better" ?
Hey, Microsoft, are you learning yet ?
Why don't you [Microsoft] do this too ?
There seems to be an article every week or so about some software company or other trying to fleece customers or existing customers.
Not sure if this was covered by The Register but Logitech wanted you to "lease" your mouse :
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/logitech-has-an-idea-for-a-forever-mouse-thatrequires-a-subscription/
All these shenanigans is just pure intense greed.
When will it end ?
I don't think it is.
We're in this situation, we have VMware up until December. I asked for a quote to see how much it would be and no one (well, VMware to the reseller) won't give a quote until 30 days prior to the renewal date. Our gaffer has a friend who works for a very large organisation and their VMware bill has gone from something like £300,000 to £1.5 million (something like that), and we're looking at each other thinking can we afford to wait till December to see how much this will cost?
We've taken the decision to migrate to Proxmox. We've moved some VMs over and it's been a breeze, even my hardened anti-opensource colleague who has a heart tattoo on his left bicep with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer's names on it*, was blown away by how good it is. We could do without the migration but considering we're fairly small and we've got time we can do it.
I think a lot of people are in the same position and can't switch in 30 days, so will either renew this time round to give themselves space and time to migrate to Proxmox, Hyper-V, the HPE one, etc.
>no one (well, VMware to the reseller) won't give a quote until 30 days prior to the renewal date
Which is such a blatant "get the customer over a barrel" move that I'm amazed trade associations, national competition regulators & similar bodies haven't been screaming blue murder about it.
"We won't tell you how much the ransom is until it's waaaaaay too late for you to do anything about it".
Yes, a prudent customer could pre-empt this by prepping for & rehearsing a move to an alternative, as a fallback solution... but Broadcom clearly count on all too many C-suites vetoing such "speculative" and "unnecessary" expenditure :(
That the IT ops teams in most enterprises feel that any move away from VMware would put their jobs at risk. So they are doing everything in their power to resist any change away from VMware.
CIOs and CTOs are spluttering in indignation at the price hikes, and issuing edicts saying they will move away from Broadcom. But their direct reports, two or three levels in the organisation, are fighting those edicts with every ounce of energy they can bring to bear.
There's a great business opportunity staring everyone in the face over this: someone needs to commercialize one of the FOSS VM alternatives, with in-house DevOps and customer support. It'll take an investment but as long as you charge a reasonable amount for your service (you know, try the same fees that VMWare used to charge) you'd become the RedHat of the FOSS VM world.
I see money to be made, but will anyone step up to the plate with the investments required??
It looks like we have a taker!
Proxmox offers enterprise support contracts:
https://www.proxmox.com/en/services/support-services/support
So someone has already taken this up. I look forward to seeing the Redhat of the virtual environment world! (.... wait. No. No, I don't. Lets *please* not have that!!)
The ultimate "alternative" to buying a VM is to buy a physical computer. It's not a sexy alternative and has its own issues to sort out but it's an option that people seem to forget about.
But failing that, there are many other VM alternatives to VMWare, some of which are paid for and others which involve a bit more effort to set up. If Broadcom is going to squeeze money out of its paying customers then this would be an excellent time to evaluate them.
There are alternatives out there already. It's just the alternatives have to be balanced with cost, migration cost, migration difficulties, and domain knowledge of the alternative. That's all a time and money thing. The bigger the corporation is the harder it is to do it quickly.
"does anyone produce a rack system with the same idea, less than 1U or perhaps a 4U that you slide multiple pc cards into? Bit like the old industrial VME and Multibus idea."
Sounds like a blade system which had its moment in the sunshine a decade or two ago.
I recall assisting a chap thinking of replacing a heap of Unix and Linux hardware with a largish but more compact blade system. One of the contenders was a HP offering which almost a perfect match, a tad expensive but not excessively so and fairly expandable. Poor sod was dudded by the bean counters and never happened and had to accommodate his existing hardware in less than 25% of his original floor space.
Interesting idea though.
Back when this all started to kick off after the Broadcom acquisition, I was responsible for the outsourced IT Management services for a significant and large government body. They had (and probably still have) a major investment in VMWare.
At the time I brought up the acquisition, Broadcom's industry reputation and likely future trajectory, at several regular meetings - just as a point of note, asking whether there was any desire to consider some cost/benefit/risk work on possible alternatives and likewise for staying put.
Also at the time their VMWare partner was being shown the door by Broadcom, so concrete news was in short supply and they had no-one to talk contracts with.
Some of the infrastructure was already using Hyper-V, although there were plans afoot to move this to VMWare, so there were a couple of angles on all this.
My points got me metaphorical funny looks from both the customer and my seniors (who insisted that I was in charge of the contract, but micromanaged me at every turn - that's another story), as if I was being alarmist.
I left that job about 3 months later for other reasons. So...
Even if the customer stayed with VMWare (they probably did), and managed to negotiate a sensible license arrangement (who knows - it's only taxpayers money), there would have been time to do some research and maybe some PoC builds with alternatives, but we'll never know.
I fear a mix of 'better the devil you know' and 'If only we'd took a serious look at this earlier, but what can we do now?'
'If only we'd took a serious look at this earlier, but what can we do now?'
That sounds like every gov dept. I have come across. Usually a lot of talk of modernising but little action until the wheels start coming off. They're not bad at adding more systems but not at changing architecture until it really hurts. As you say it's only our money. I feel a rant rising whenever I consider taxation; all politics and extortion and not what the people want. It all ends with private company shareholders which makes me scream whenever I hear "the Tories will privatise the NHS narrative" ... the only thing that isn't private already is the majority of staff and not all. Most of their protocols have been influenced by Pharma for profit. IT companies are all over them. Someone is doing good business on "managing" the parking. The management is more interested in data collection and making life difficult than cures while poncing around with rainbows. Should be called the National Harm Service. I'm surprised we aren't required to lick their boots and hand over our first born to get service. And ... how much tax have I paid for this crap over my lifetime? Millions?
I am never going to get that back if I keep taking responsibility for my own health ... may as well get a bottle of scotch, some Capstan full strength, a bucket of chips and sit infront of Love Island all night.
It wouldn't be the first time I've led a complete migration away from VMware.
If I'm honest, it wouldn't be the second time, either. And that time involved moving everything to a different city at the same time.
I'm a certified VCP; VMware was my bread and butter, and then they pissed me off with their rental licensing, based on the amount of RAM, measured every hour. And they just kept bumping up the cost, until it got cheaper for us to go Windows Datacentre with unlimited Hyper-V licensed. And it didn't take me long to find my comfort zone there.
The real trick is backups. VMware has some fantastic backup options, as has Hyper-V. Once we can get Veeam / Rubrik / Datto / whatever all working on KVM / Xen / Proxmox / whatever else, VMware are on very shaky ground indeed.
> No enterprise alternatives: Maybe it's just really good software?
It *was* really good software. I wanted vSAN, too -- we had storage devices around, and it would've been great to concentrate those into a SAN. However at $2500 per storage-box, it was cheaper to buy a new, large SAN. That cost only makes sense if you have a bunch of large SANs that you want to consolidate into an *even larger* SAN. It doesn't make any sense -- unless it's just part of the bundle. (ahem.)
> Increased prices: Maybe it's cheap compared to how much it saves people?
And so you'd better increase the cost until it does *not* save anyone money, and all of that would-be savings is now your profit. That's the business way. And then increase it some more, just because you have to make your mark, and then since Broadcom is buying an established user base, increase it *A HELL OF A LOT MORE* because they know it's hard to migrate. All that they *really* need to do is recoup their investment and show some profit, and then... future? who cares? Profit made. (Like investing in the stock market.)
New customers(hah) will look at it, and decide that it, in fact, won't save them money (any more). They'll look around, and..... huh.
(Point: is this style of business - maximize profit from vulnerable groups, with the inevitable destruction of the business' services/product - what's in the best interest of society? Typically the rules of capitalism and government and society are in place and loose because it helps make _society_ a better place, acknowledging that there will be some drawbacks and some unfortunate costs, but with a net-benefit. Does this provide that net-benefit? even in the short-term?)
> Small customers moving away: Maybe they don't want to sell to them?
Not entirely unreasonable. However making an exclusive club, kicking out 95% of your customers, is something that the [local] government ought to be looking into. With great interest. (See above point.)
So basically VMWare is now FIFTEEN times more expensive than last month.
And their 3 year contracts essentially allow a complete 15x AGAIN every year.
So within 3 years a $100 price will be $72,000+
seriously. Broadcom wants VMWare Dead, buried and is prinkling the grave with holy water to be sure it doesn't rise from the dead.
Only seems to be HyperV and Proxmox mentioned here.
I use Proxmox and have decommissioned a HyperV environment (archive and turn off) both are extremely capable.
I haven't experienced Nutanix but it seems to be offering canned migration paths for VMware refugees. I think I read in el Rego that Veam now supports Nutanix.
Joyent's SmartOS is an oddball offering built on a OpenSolaris base with both BSD Bhyve and Linux KVM virtualisation. Actually quite impressed and found it rather solid.
Probably a lot more out there that for a particular organisation, or part of, might be a perfect match. For example, if your product was exclusively built atop FreeBSD, a Joyent supported SmartOS environment might actually be a better fit than VMWare.
Nothing like having a bit of diversity and hybrid vigour to evolve in uncertain times. ;)
HPE have launched Morpheus VM Essentials. I had a demo about 2 months back. A bit new and wet behind the ears, but looked like it could be useful. I've not git around to playing with it yet and I haven't got a clue about the pricing, but it is another option for people to add to their lists.
So we're looking to test that against Proxmox to see what's what.
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