5 ms·

It's just throwing money away too. Small customers aren't using all the advanced features, probably barely touching the support tickets. It's a software license

It's just throwing money away too. Small customers aren't using all the advanced features, probably barely touching the support tickets. It's a software license, selling it costs them nothing.

3eb7988a1663 2y ago
I guess you can cut the size of your sales team. You no longer have to go hunting for customers, because you can just look at market caps.
- sys_64738 2y ago
  BRCM generally has an account manager (or several) for specific companies in the Enterprise. This is the target customer they're after, not volume. There's no profit in volume support here so BRCM doesn't waste their time and resources.
infecto 2y ago
You might be surprised, but for many businesses that serve both enterprise and small customers, the smaller accounts often end up being a poor use of time. While it can vary, in many cases, small customers contribute only a small fraction of total revenue yet require a disproportionate amount of support and resources.
- ocdtrekkie 2y ago
  I'm not surprised, but I also don't think that's likely to be a thing for VMware: Most small customers have one to three servers running a basic vSphere install and nothing complicated to speak of. You can also delete most of the problem by limiting the support on given license tiers.
  - infecto 2y ago
    We're speculating, but I think the key point is missed: SMBs likely contribute a negligible share of revenue, small enough that supporting them isn't worth it. Even if support seems minimal, billing issues and tickets inevitably arise, often handled by a different team, which cancels out any marginal gains.
- TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
  This is a bane of my business. We’re a small business, but we’re a technology business. When we use a product we tend to use advanced features. Things like auditing and log streaming to SIEM, enforced SAML SSO, stuff like that. We tend not to need support, and when we do it’s almost always because something is broken on the vendor end. In the past six months I’ve filed exactly one support ticket. With Microsoft, due to a persistent internal error when calling a specific Azure API, which only they could fix, and which they did after about a week and a half. There is virtually nothing we can’t handle internally except for the the issues any customer couldn’t handle. The irony is that not having an avenue for SMBs makes SMBs sometimes go elsewhere and either spend more money (sometimes with a competitor), or missing out on basically “free” revenue. I understand the logic but it drives me crazy at times.
  - infecto 2y ago
    This is a classic long tail issue. That segment of technically advanced, low-touch SMBs like yours absolutely exists—but it’s small, and hard to identify upfront. The problem is that the long tail as a whole tends to generate minimal revenue while driving disproportionately high support and product complexity.
heraldgeezer 2y ago
Working for a business with clients, I vastly prefer larger clients. Larger clients usually have better in-house knowledge of our own products, leading to LESS support tickets. Smaller clients think they are big dogs and are typically very demanding of support for very little pay. Due to these small companies abusing free support, we have had to introduce paid SLA levels.
- sys_64738 2y ago
  Totally agree. Small clients need the most hand holding we've found so they're cut loose pretty quickly. Seems BRCM does the same with VMWare.

It's just throwing money away too. Small customers aren't using all the advanced features, probably barely touching the support tickets. It's a software license, selling it costs them nothing.

3eb7988a1663 2y ago

I guess you can cut the size of your sales team. You no longer have to go hunting for customers, because you can just look at market caps.

sys_64738 2y ago
BRCM generally has an account manager (or several) for specific companies in the Enterprise. This is the target customer they're after, not volume. There's no profit in volume support here so BRCM doesn't waste their time and resources.

infecto 2y ago

You might be surprised, but for many businesses that serve both enterprise and small customers, the smaller accounts often end up being a poor use of time. While it can vary, in many cases, small customers contribute only a small fraction of total revenue yet require a disproportionate amount of support and resources.

ocdtrekkie 2y ago
I'm not surprised, but I also don't think that's likely to be a thing for VMware: Most small customers have one to three servers running a basic vSphere install and nothing complicated to speak of. You can also delete most of the problem by limiting the support on given license tiers.
- infecto 2y ago
  We're speculating, but I think the key point is missed: SMBs likely contribute a negligible share of revenue, small enough that supporting them isn't worth it. Even if support seems minimal, billing issues and tickets inevitably arise, often handled by a different team, which cancels out any marginal gains.
TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
This is a bane of my business. We’re a small business, but we’re a technology business. When we use a product we tend to use advanced features. Things like auditing and log streaming to SIEM, enforced SAML SSO, stuff like that. We tend not to need support, and when we do it’s almost always because something is broken on the vendor end. In the past six months I’ve filed exactly one support ticket. With Microsoft, due to a persistent internal error when calling a specific Azure API, which only they could fix, and which they did after about a week and a half. There is virtually nothing we can’t handle internally except for the the issues any customer couldn’t handle. The irony is that not having an avenue for SMBs makes SMBs sometimes go elsewhere and either spend more money (sometimes with a competitor), or missing out on basically “free” revenue. I understand the logic but it drives me crazy at times.
- infecto 2y ago
  This is a classic long tail issue. That segment of technically advanced, low-touch SMBs like yours absolutely exists—but it’s small, and hard to identify upfront. The problem is that the long tail as a whole tends to generate minimal revenue while driving disproportionately high support and product complexity.

heraldgeezer 2y ago

Working for a business with clients, I vastly prefer larger clients. Larger clients usually have better in-house knowledge of our own products, leading to LESS support tickets. Smaller clients think they are big dogs and are typically very demanding of support for very little pay. Due to these small companies abusing free support, we have had to introduce paid SLA levels.

sys_64738 2y ago
Totally agree. Small clients need the most hand holding we've found so they're cut loose pretty quickly. Seems BRCM does the same with VMWare.