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Back in 2020, VMware pivoted hard into the cloud computing/software space with the acquisitions of Carbon Black, Heptio, and Pivotal—I was a Pivot prior the acq

Back in 2020, VMware pivoted hard into the cloud computing/software space with the acquisitions of Carbon Black, Heptio, and Pivotal—I was a Pivot prior the acquisition. They rolled all these acquisitions into a single business unit to sell (formerly) Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), and other products in an on-prem, enterprise PaaS offering. I left shortly after the Pivotal acquisition closed, so I didn't see firsthand how it unfolded, but from folks I talked to, it seemed that VMware batted teams around and really mixed the whole thing up.

grepfru_it 3y ago
Picked up where you left off. It seems that VMware was pulled apart and its carcass was sold off
bogomipz 3y ago
>" They rolled all these acquisitions into a single business unit to sell (formerly) Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), and other products in an on-prem, enterprise PaaS offering." So what happened to Heptio exactlY? Were they combined with Pivotal and spun-off?
- natbennett 3y ago
  Their staff got smooshed together with Pivotal and a few other acquired odds-and-ends and largely set to work building a suite of Kubernetes-related products under the “Tanzu” brand. This included a Kubernetes manager (TKG) and an application platform (TAP) that were supposed to replace the BOSH-based Kubernetes installer (TKG-i, formerly known as PKS) and application platform (TAS, formerly known as PCF, better known as Cloud Foundry). They got stirred around a few times via reorg, then the Heptio founders retired. Last I heard everyone in Tanzu was trying to get themselves reclassified as somehow part of the Cloud Foundry/BOSH stuff because it has significant revenue and was believed to be safe(r) from Broadcom layoffs.
  - bogomipz 3y ago
    Wow, what a mess. Thanks for the recap. So is the Tanzu product going away then and were they hit hard in these layoffs?
    - regalli 3y ago
      The exact opposite. Tanzu is a cash cow due to their customer base from pivotal. Its a mix between they left the good parts of the Tanzu portfolio alone while they chased their Kubernetes vision. The commercialized version of Cloud Foundry never went away post pivotal acquisition, the “legacy” products VMware tried so hard to move away from accounted for a overwhelming majority of Tanzu’s revenue stream disclaimer: ex tanzu support
      - natbennett 3y ago
        Yeah I don’t know what they’re doing with the new parts of Tanzu that don’t have revenue (will ask the next time I talk to folks, but I mostly don’t know people in that part of the org) but I haven’t seen any sign they’re cutting TAS. The only folks I know who got laid off so far took an optional severance package that was offered to everyone. The continuing offers were strong. Cloud Foundry customers really, really like Cloud Foundry, and are uninterested in running it without support from a vendor.

grepfru_it 3y ago

Picked up where you left off. It seems that VMware was pulled apart and its carcass was sold off

bogomipz 3y ago

>" They rolled all these acquisitions into a single business unit to sell (formerly) Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), and other products in an on-prem, enterprise PaaS offering." So what happened to Heptio exactlY? Were they combined with Pivotal and spun-off?

natbennett 3y ago
Their staff got smooshed together with Pivotal and a few other acquired odds-and-ends and largely set to work building a suite of Kubernetes-related products under the “Tanzu” brand. This included a Kubernetes manager (TKG) and an application platform (TAP) that were supposed to replace the BOSH-based Kubernetes installer (TKG-i, formerly known as PKS) and application platform (TAS, formerly known as PCF, better known as Cloud Foundry). They got stirred around a few times via reorg, then the Heptio founders retired. Last I heard everyone in Tanzu was trying to get themselves reclassified as somehow part of the Cloud Foundry/BOSH stuff because it has significant revenue and was believed to be safe(r) from Broadcom layoffs.
- bogomipz 3y ago
  Wow, what a mess. Thanks for the recap. So is the Tanzu product going away then and were they hit hard in these layoffs?
  - regalli 3y ago
    The exact opposite. Tanzu is a cash cow due to their customer base from pivotal. Its a mix between they left the good parts of the Tanzu portfolio alone while they chased their Kubernetes vision. The commercialized version of Cloud Foundry never went away post pivotal acquisition, the “legacy” products VMware tried so hard to move away from accounted for a overwhelming majority of Tanzu’s revenue stream disclaimer: ex tanzu support
    - natbennett 3y ago
      Yeah I don’t know what they’re doing with the new parts of Tanzu that don’t have revenue (will ask the next time I talk to folks, but I mostly don’t know people in that part of the org) but I haven’t seen any sign they’re cutting TAS. The only folks I know who got laid off so far took an optional severance package that was offered to everyone. The continuing offers were strong. Cloud Foundry customers really, really like Cloud Foundry, and are uninterested in running it without support from a vendor.