This sounds like it’s exactly what Broadcom intended. They are going to charge as much as they can and companies that depend on it will have to pay until they can move away and that may take years. Broadcom didn’t dig a hole. They triggered a trap on their customers.
Broadcom has willingly dug its VMware hole, says cloud CEO
Submitted 7 months ago by ylai@lemmy.ml to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/08/broadcom_vmware_civo/
Comments
pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Exactly.
Many SMB’s lack the in-house expertise to switch to something like Proxmox, and even then the support contract cost for things like Proxmox or TRUENAS, etc, isn’t much less than what VMware intends to charge.
Management in such businesses have a hard time comprehending the value in paying for a transition when the annual support costs at the moment don’t seem significantly lower (depending on number of processors, of course). There’s still the migration cost, and the risk of migrating.
SMB tends to outsource their system management a great deal - I can only hope these vendors see the value in migrating away from VMware.
pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Everyone I talked to knew that this was what was going to happen when Broadcom bought VMware. I work in a relatively agile industry so everyone starting moving away from VMware as soon as the sale was announced. But I know a lot industries will be stuck for awhile.
RalphFurley@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’ve spent the last 15 years working with VMware exclusively. A little nervous about all of this
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 7 months ago
You re in trouble my friend.
RalphFurley@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’ve done this for so long I might just be like that old Cobol programmer in need during Y2K at some point.
GreatAlbatross@feddit.uk 7 months ago
When Broadcom announced the purchase a year or so ago, I abandoned all further VMWare certs, and put the time into getting my head around the alternatives.
I still have to use VMWare for 90% of my job, but I’m absolutely treating it like a locked-in platform, and assuming that anything I learn to do in VMWare, I need to understand the underlying concepts, not just their interpretation, and how I can do similar things on other platforms.RalphFurley@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I took a good look at Apache CloudStack. I of course have been migrating stuff to k8s and working with cloud native stuff that can be hypervisor independent or bare metal even.
I’m this close to an NSX-T cert and that will be the last one. That will be in high demand for quite some time I’d expect.
pastermil@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Is there not an alternative to what you use?
4grams@awful.systems 7 months ago
Same. Since the aquisition, I’ve moved all my home infrastructure off vmware to debian/docker and currently trying to get in front of our next renewal at work. I’ve been ready to pivot if necessary but no one seems to believe me that we need to be ready for our pending licensing converation…
zephr_c@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Well if the CEO of clouds says it, it must be true!
jordanlund@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Broadcom has a history of acquiring IP and not having the first clue what to do with it.
Look at CA Tech… they had partnered with CNN to manage election data in 2016… bought by Broadcom in 2018… And now?
henfredemars@infosec.pub 7 months ago
Oh no! I guess.
Broadcom is out to juice a product for its value before throwing it in the bin. Broadcom knows exactly what it’s doing, and that is praying on customers and exploiting engineers.
BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 7 months ago
I’m not even sure they’re going to bin it. Maybe shed the last-profitable customers to maximize profit from the large consumers. At least for a few years.
Call me cynical, but to me it’s about pushing consumers (SMB) to cloud providers instead of virtualizing on-prem with VMware. Broadcom can still sell VMware and support to larger vendors, or to SMB’s for a heftier profit margin.
I can only hope many SMB’s have support vendors who see the value in shifting to TrueNAS, Proxmox, etc (there are vendors who provide support contracts for those Open-source packages).
bluGill@kbin.social 7 months ago
The problem with large customers is they can see value and if you charge too much it goes they can build their own.