10 ms·

Oh no https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/uxucz4/if_vmware_is_acquired_by_broadcom_run_and_do_not/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/u

by SSLy 4y ago

Oh no https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/uxucz4/if_vmware_is_acquired_by_broadcom_run_and_do_not/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/uxucz4/if_vm...

nwatson 4y ago
Yep, that's Broadcom's business model ... buy a business (VMWare), ignore its smaller customers, upsell the Fortune 500 on the product (VMWare) to push out competing solutions, and keep the line items on those Fortune 500 bills growing. It's worked for them I guess. I left a Broadcom acquisition before the takeover.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- devonkim 4y ago
  It’s kind of par for the entire enterprise market as a whole similar to the structural problems of b2b companies. SMBs are hard to serve effectively and the margins are slim, so you’ll see companies that are b2b move more toward SMB b2b (see: Best Buy although Apple is the clear exception here). Everyone chases the big accounts because the model is less risky no different than how there’s no shortage of luxury homes being built.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
Why wouldn't you just post to the article directly, and bypass the horrible Reddit web site for the redirect?
- cruano 4y ago
  Because the reddit post was also made by the author ? And he's responding to the comments there too?
  - TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
    Fair enough.
- goodguyamercunt 4y ago
  Install old reddit redirect on firefox
0x53 4y ago
Linked by Reddit poster: https://kicksec.io/vmware-too-big-to-fail/ https://kicksec.io/vmware-too-big-to-fail/
- ra7 4y ago
  From the article: > My hope is that Michael Dell vetos this merger, from my accounts of Michael and the people I know who are employed by Dell, Michael is a great leader and a good human being and that is the most important thing, not profit at any cost. I don't know if the author is serious. This deal has Michael Dell financial engineering written all over it. He's not going to veto anything. Dell is all about enriching himself with moves like this rather organically grow a company.
technion 4y ago
It's relevant that they are talking about VMware's security portfolio. The vast majority of why people are VMware proponents is down to their virtualisation software. It's why we were big resellers for a while. But for the last few years, their own sales people have only wanted to talk about security products, quite plainly acknowledging stagnant growth in on premise virtualisation. But virtualisation is in my view the only place they've made it big. You've just linked a Reddit post in /r/cybersecurity talking about security products and every reply is about how to replace ESXi. It'll be interesting to see how their future pans out.
- andyjohnson0 4y ago
  This. Virtualisation has been commodified - cloud, kubernetes, docker, hyper-v, even virtualbox. Whereas securing a decade's worth of on-prem infrastructure is a real pain-point for enterprises. VMware Workstation blew my mind when I saw it demoed in (I think) mid-2000 [1]. I genuinely couldn't believe what I was seeing - it seemed that revolutionary, running an OS inside an OS on a desktop. I wonder whether VMware's problem nowadays is that, having basically invented the technology, they've become almost synonymous with the category of virtualisation tech - kind of like "Hoover" for home appliances - and their other products get less attention. (I know that VMware didn't invent the idea of virtual machines. But my perception is that at that time, virtualised OSs were mostly found in mainframes.)
  - scarface74 4y ago
    I was running an x86 VM on my 16Mhz 68030 Mac LCII in 1996 in college - SoftPC by Insignia Solutions.
    - axiolite 4y ago
      > I was running an x86 VM on my 16Mhz 68030 Mac LCII in 1996 in college - SoftPC by Insignia Solutions. That's called emulation. That's not what VMWare does.
      - 4y ago
999900000999 4y ago
This feels way too pessimistic, VMware got big before open source virtualization took off. I imagine someone could use docker instead of VMware in most cases, and if that's not possible then hire some people to make it so. Vendor lockin is a scary thing, the people who are really going to hurt here are mega super corps who are now going to have to pay out the nose. If you're a smaller company, you should be moving to docker or another open source solution anyway.
- metamet 4y ago
  > I imagine someone could use docker instead of VMware in most cases, and if that's not possible then hire some people to make it so. It's been a few years since I've worked with bare metal, but doesn't Docker require a hypervisor for the containers? You could swap to KVM or Hyper-V, but transitioning an org's hypervisor on bare metal is a massive task any way you cut it.
  - zekrioca 4y ago
    Currently, Docker only requires an hypervisor if you set it on Windows or MacOS.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - electroly 4y ago
    No, docker doesn't require a hypervisor of any kind.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    No, Docker is not a hypervisor and doesn't use one unless you need to add one for security reasons; it uses Linux features to build containers. On the other hand, yes switching from virtual machines to containers it is likely to be a non-trivial workflow change and not something a company can do on a dime.
  - jordanbeiber 4y ago
    No hypervisor for cgroups (docker & friends), no. Which is why something like LXD/LXC outperforms hypervisor virtualization by quite a bit. I was on a team that ran performance critical stuff for a reasonable sized ecommerce business - moving from vmware to bare metal was fantastic on every level from api’s to performance and reliability. The enterprise spirit is stong in vmware.
notRobot 4y ago
> > Announcing the deal, Broadcom said the acquisition was part of its strategy to buy “established mission-critical technology businesses”. > Seems like their software strategy is to buy a business which doesn't have much room to grow but is extremely entrenched, and then reduce staffing and raise prices as much as possible.

by SSLy 4y ago

Oh no https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/uxucz4/if_vmware_is_acquired_by_broadcom_run_and_do_not/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/uxucz4/if_vm...

nwatson 4y ago

Yep, that's Broadcom's business model ... buy a business (VMWare), ignore its smaller customers, upsell the Fortune 500 on the product (VMWare) to push out competing solutions, and keep the line items on those Fortune 500 bills growing. It's worked for them I guess. I left a Broadcom acquisition before the takeover.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
devonkim 4y ago
It’s kind of par for the entire enterprise market as a whole similar to the structural problems of b2b companies. SMBs are hard to serve effectively and the margins are slim, so you’ll see companies that are b2b move more toward SMB b2b (see: Best Buy although Apple is the clear exception here). Everyone chases the big accounts because the model is less risky no different than how there’s no shortage of luxury homes being built.

TheRealDunkirk 4y ago

Why wouldn't you just post to the article directly, and bypass the horrible Reddit web site for the redirect?

cruano 4y ago
Because the reddit post was also made by the author ? And he's responding to the comments there too?
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  Fair enough.
goodguyamercunt 4y ago
Install old reddit redirect on firefox

0x53 4y ago

Linked by Reddit poster: https://kicksec.io/vmware-too-big-to-fail/ https://kicksec.io/vmware-too-big-to-fail/

ra7 4y ago
From the article: > My hope is that Michael Dell vetos this merger, from my accounts of Michael and the people I know who are employed by Dell, Michael is a great leader and a good human being and that is the most important thing, not profit at any cost. I don't know if the author is serious. This deal has Michael Dell financial engineering written all over it. He's not going to veto anything. Dell is all about enriching himself with moves like this rather organically grow a company.

technion 4y ago

It's relevant that they are talking about VMware's security portfolio. The vast majority of why people are VMware proponents is down to their virtualisation software. It's why we were big resellers for a while. But for the last few years, their own sales people have only wanted to talk about security products, quite plainly acknowledging stagnant growth in on premise virtualisation. But virtualisation is in my view the only place they've made it big. You've just linked a Reddit post in /r/cybersecurity talking about security products and every reply is about how to replace ESXi. It'll be interesting to see how their future pans out.

andyjohnson0 4y ago
This. Virtualisation has been commodified - cloud, kubernetes, docker, hyper-v, even virtualbox. Whereas securing a decade's worth of on-prem infrastructure is a real pain-point for enterprises. VMware Workstation blew my mind when I saw it demoed in (I think) mid-2000 [1]. I genuinely couldn't believe what I was seeing - it seemed that revolutionary, running an OS inside an OS on a desktop. I wonder whether VMware's problem nowadays is that, having basically invented the technology, they've become almost synonymous with the category of virtualisation tech - kind of like "Hoover" for home appliances - and their other products get less attention. (I know that VMware didn't invent the idea of virtual machines. But my perception is that at that time, virtualised OSs were mostly found in mainframes.)
- scarface74 4y ago
  I was running an x86 VM on my 16Mhz 68030 Mac LCII in 1996 in college - SoftPC by Insignia Solutions.
  - axiolite 4y ago
    > I was running an x86 VM on my 16Mhz 68030 Mac LCII in 1996 in college - SoftPC by Insignia Solutions. That's called emulation. That's not what VMWare does.
    - 4y ago

999900000999 4y ago

This feels way too pessimistic, VMware got big before open source virtualization took off. I imagine someone could use docker instead of VMware in most cases, and if that's not possible then hire some people to make it so. Vendor lockin is a scary thing, the people who are really going to hurt here are mega super corps who are now going to have to pay out the nose. If you're a smaller company, you should be moving to docker or another open source solution anyway.

metamet 4y ago
> I imagine someone could use docker instead of VMware in most cases, and if that's not possible then hire some people to make it so. It's been a few years since I've worked with bare metal, but doesn't Docker require a hypervisor for the containers? You could swap to KVM or Hyper-V, but transitioning an org's hypervisor on bare metal is a massive task any way you cut it.
- zekrioca 4y ago
  Currently, Docker only requires an hypervisor if you set it on Windows or MacOS.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- electroly 4y ago
  No, docker doesn't require a hypervisor of any kind.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  No, Docker is not a hypervisor and doesn't use one unless you need to add one for security reasons; it uses Linux features to build containers. On the other hand, yes switching from virtual machines to containers it is likely to be a non-trivial workflow change and not something a company can do on a dime.
- jordanbeiber 4y ago
  No hypervisor for cgroups (docker & friends), no. Which is why something like LXD/LXC outperforms hypervisor virtualization by quite a bit. I was on a team that ran performance critical stuff for a reasonable sized ecommerce business - moving from vmware to bare metal was fantastic on every level from api’s to performance and reliability. The enterprise spirit is stong in vmware.

notRobot 4y ago

> > Announcing the deal, Broadcom said the acquisition was part of its strategy to buy “established mission-critical technology businesses”. > Seems like their software strategy is to buy a business which doesn't have much room to grow but is extremely entrenched, and then reduce staffing and raise prices as much as possible.