4 ms·

Broadcom fucked up the VMWare products but good. No more products for individuals, and the enterprise cloud is losing customers.

nikanj 1y ago
Increasing price five-fold and losing three out of four customers still means you come out ahead revenue-wise, and your internal costs probably go down as you have so many fewer customers to support
- benterix 1y ago
  Sounds like an interesting exit strategy.
- blibble 1y ago
  it's not a sustainable approach, because every single one of the customers you've "retained" will be looking to dump you as soon as possible
  - le-mark 1y ago
    Some percentage of customers can’t leave if they want to. The ones who have laid off and cost cut to such a level they can no longer undertake projects to move to another virtualization environment. I’m at one such company. The staff we have now couldn’t do it in a year, or even two.
    - nottorp 1y ago
      > The staff we have now couldn’t do it in a year, or even two. You're talking like two years is long term...
  - buran77 1y ago
    > it's not a sustainable approach For the current Broadcom leadership this doesn't have to be sustainable, just bring in enough of a profit to justify the whole thing. They do not want a slow and steady profit stream but a big squeeze and done. I bet they got what they hoped for.
  - nikanj 1y ago
    It’s like oil drilling, completely unsustainable but great money to be made short-term. It just needs to be milkable long enough to make more money than the acquisition price
- digitalsushi 1y ago
  what happens to a software product when it has a small fraction of the original users? all that free testing as customer support shifts to someone else's platform, eventually but i think the 'eventually' is the reason this is working for them
SOLAR_FIELDS 1y ago
Two of my family members built a good hunk of their careers on VMware products. This is the poster child story for why to not put all of your eggs in a single closed source basket.
- crinkly 1y ago
  Yep. One of my colleagues went all in on Crowdstrike a couple of years back. That went hilariously badly for him due to obvious reasons.
  - SirFatty 1y ago
    Not hilarious to him I bet..
    - crinkly 1y ago
      Well we warned him. He got paid to set it up and then paid to get rid of it so it went rather well for him but not in the way he though it was going to. Plenty of time to roll out a plan B which worked out better for him anyway.
- mitjam 1y ago
  Same here, but I jumped ship to cloud, Kubernetes & Co. some years ago. I know many who still live well on VMware products, even if they are just busy migrating workloads to other platforms.
mitjam 1y ago
It was easy to miss between all the back and forth, but VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion are now free for all users, including for commercial use [1], and since last month, ESXi is also free, again [2]. [1] https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2024/11/11/vmware-fusion-and-workstation-are-now-free-for-all-users/ https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2024/11/11/vmware-... [2] https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/399823/vmware-esxi-80-update-3e-now-available-a.html https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/399823/vmwar...
- asimops 1y ago
  I have seen [1] a long time ago. But AFAIK until this day, the Workstation installer still asks whether you are either a private user or have a license key... So is it really free?
v5v3 1y ago
VMware's VM products are on way out as enterprises are all Kubernetes with containers or serverles functions and this will natural trickle down. I suspect the strategy is to extract maximum cash whilst they can.
- Incipient 1y ago
  I deal, with mid size (200-800) people and there is no k8s or serverless to be seen anywhere. Personally I don't have a huge amount of experience with either, so I'm possibly a bit biased, but I see k8s as either a hyperscale solution or someone wanting to be cool and trendy. Same goes for serverless, other than niche use cases of say running python code in a 100% Azure ecosystem when you just have absolutely zero other choice.
  - v5v3 1y ago
    That's why I used the term trickle down, meaning in time. It may not be k8s as we know it today, but many SMEs are most certainly using containers, via Docker. Ultimately containers use less resources than a full VM and allow dependency management. VMs is a reducing business.
    - Incipient 1y ago
      I generally see docker (used) as a second tier isolation. IT hands out VMs to vendors/teams, and then the vendor/team spins up 3-4 containers in that VM to suit their needs. I'm aware it's technically possible to have a large, wide fleet of containers...but I don't really see it going that way (at all). My current thoughts of why is separation of knowledge - IT knows how to manage infra and virtualisation, and the vendor/teams know how their individual docker containers need to be set up/work. I do agree full virtualisation is probably on the decline, but the current tech is definitely staying around in my size of business.

nikanj 1y ago

Increasing price five-fold and losing three out of four customers still means you come out ahead revenue-wise, and your internal costs probably go down as you have so many fewer customers to support

benterix 1y ago
Sounds like an interesting exit strategy.
blibble 1y ago
it's not a sustainable approach, because every single one of the customers you've "retained" will be looking to dump you as soon as possible
- le-mark 1y ago
  Some percentage of customers can’t leave if they want to. The ones who have laid off and cost cut to such a level they can no longer undertake projects to move to another virtualization environment. I’m at one such company. The staff we have now couldn’t do it in a year, or even two.
  - nottorp 1y ago
    > The staff we have now couldn’t do it in a year, or even two. You're talking like two years is long term...
- buran77 1y ago
  > it's not a sustainable approach For the current Broadcom leadership this doesn't have to be sustainable, just bring in enough of a profit to justify the whole thing. They do not want a slow and steady profit stream but a big squeeze and done. I bet they got what they hoped for.
- nikanj 1y ago
  It’s like oil drilling, completely unsustainable but great money to be made short-term. It just needs to be milkable long enough to make more money than the acquisition price
digitalsushi 1y ago
what happens to a software product when it has a small fraction of the original users? all that free testing as customer support shifts to someone else's platform, eventually but i think the 'eventually' is the reason this is working for them

SOLAR_FIELDS 1y ago

Two of my family members built a good hunk of their careers on VMware products. This is the poster child story for why to not put all of your eggs in a single closed source basket.

crinkly 1y ago
Yep. One of my colleagues went all in on Crowdstrike a couple of years back. That went hilariously badly for him due to obvious reasons.
- SirFatty 1y ago
  Not hilarious to him I bet..
  - crinkly 1y ago
    Well we warned him. He got paid to set it up and then paid to get rid of it so it went rather well for him but not in the way he though it was going to. Plenty of time to roll out a plan B which worked out better for him anyway.
mitjam 1y ago
Same here, but I jumped ship to cloud, Kubernetes & Co. some years ago. I know many who still live well on VMware products, even if they are just busy migrating workloads to other platforms.

mitjam 1y ago

It was easy to miss between all the back and forth, but VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion are now free for all users, including for commercial use [1], and since last month, ESXi is also free, again [2]. [1] https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2024/11/11/vmware-fusion-and-workstation-are-now-free-for-all-users/ https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2024/11/11/vmware-... [2] https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/399823/vmware-esxi-80-update-3e-now-available-a.html https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/399823/vmwar...

asimops 1y ago
I have seen [1] a long time ago. But AFAIK until this day, the Workstation installer still asks whether you are either a private user or have a license key... So is it really free?

v5v3 1y ago

VMware's VM products are on way out as enterprises are all Kubernetes with containers or serverles functions and this will natural trickle down. I suspect the strategy is to extract maximum cash whilst they can.

Incipient 1y ago
I deal, with mid size (200-800) people and there is no k8s or serverless to be seen anywhere. Personally I don't have a huge amount of experience with either, so I'm possibly a bit biased, but I see k8s as either a hyperscale solution or someone wanting to be cool and trendy. Same goes for serverless, other than niche use cases of say running python code in a 100% Azure ecosystem when you just have absolutely zero other choice.
- v5v3 1y ago
  That's why I used the term trickle down, meaning in time. It may not be k8s as we know it today, but many SMEs are most certainly using containers, via Docker. Ultimately containers use less resources than a full VM and allow dependency management. VMs is a reducing business.
  - Incipient 1y ago
    I generally see docker (used) as a second tier isolation. IT hands out VMs to vendors/teams, and then the vendor/team spins up 3-4 containers in that VM to suit their needs. I'm aware it's technically possible to have a large, wide fleet of containers...but I don't really see it going that way (at all). My current thoughts of why is separation of knowledge - IT knows how to manage infra and virtualisation, and the vendor/teams know how their individual docker containers need to be set up/work. I do agree full virtualisation is probably on the decline, but the current tech is definitely staying around in my size of business.