VMware before Broadcom was 'a unicorn in fluffy cloudland' In the 20 months since Broadcom took over VMware, Yves Sandfort has become the most ardent and prolific commentator on the acquisition. The CEO of Germany-headquartered VMware partner Comdivision Consulting has created almost 300 videos and still has plenty to say about where VMware went wrong, and where Broadcom needs to …
It's very difficult to get a man to say something when his salary depends on not doing so.
This business depends entirely on VMware remaining relevant. When it dies, his business dies with it*
In private, he is absolutely terrified. In public, he must pretend everything is great and Nutanix et all aren't eating his lunch.
Though he's not wrong that VMware was resting on laurels, watching the money roll in. Everyone knew that, they were just smart enough to keep the prices low enough that nobody needed to look at alternatives.
* Well, actually, his business probably dies first as Broadcom will take his margins away
"SAP and IBM have always focused on big clients and declined to work with smaller organizations"
- sure, but then SAP and IBM generally only sell products suited to bigger clients - VMWare had the potential to be a game-changer even for tiny organisations where the virtualisation benefits were huge even with a very simple config
“The last time I checked my Microsoft 365 subscription, there are 50 products in there which I have never even heard about, but I pay for them. So that's more or less the same story”
- it's nothing like the same story, MS users generally only want Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and an Outlook/Exchange combo - all the other stuff is there just to try to put other niche software vendors out of business. VMWare now wants you to pay for a whole stack that is absolutely no use whatsoever unless you are a much larger client.
This is simply about one of VMWare largest partners trying to defend the indefensible because he knows where his next meal is coming from, nothing more, nothing less
I've spoken to lots of VMware customers since the acquisition, some of them who have literally founded their businesses on VMware, and the only ones who haven't reported massive price increases have been the ones on locked-in price agreements, which will expire shortly. Everyone else has been getting absolutely boned, enough that even the most staunchly loyal customers are looking at alternatives.
For people on the low end, Proxmox is seeming like a very popular choice, but scaling and support issues make it unsuitable for large enterprises, so dark horse Platform9 seems to be garnering fans in that space. Nutanix is making hay, as well, from what I've seen, while Citrix seems to have missed the boat, and Microsoft is profiting by drawing customers into Azure.
With even very large VMware customers jumping ship, it will be very interesting to see where the product winds up in a few years.
We work with large enterprises, with the largest being a Telco who's one of the big 3. They were entirely VMWare across the board, but they've decided to keep vSphere for their telco core, but all of the corporate environment is moving to Azure Local instead.
Few others are switching to Nutanix, Azure and/or Azure Local. Even if they can afford the price increase they resent how they've been treated. So much goodwill destroyed.
And this is why I've been tasked 100% to find a way off vMware by the end of next year. We are one of the largest corporations in the world, so it's not that... I love VMWare and have used it for decades, but I can see why the guys and gals with calculators and spreadsheets are pushing hard for this. Broadcom ruins everything in my experience.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
