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>Broadcom's "strategy" is absolutely baffling to me. I know plenty of Enterprise customers who cannot move easily and just renewed 3 year VMware licenses for t

>Broadcom's "strategy" is absolutely baffling to me. I know plenty of Enterprise customers who cannot move easily and just renewed 3 year VMware licenses for their cluster at insane rates. They are planning on moving but I'd be shocked if they complete it. $LastCompany had VMware footprint I know will be very difficult to move off, deployments, monitoring, backups were all dependent on VMware. There are plenty of US Government entities who are not even considering it at this time. Also, Broadcom has slashed expenses so I wouldn't be shocked if profit margins are crazy. This article: https://www.theregister.com/software/2025/03/07/bulk-of-big-broadcom-customers-sign-for-vmware-private-cloud/1104430?td=rt-3a https://www.theregister.com/software/2025/03/07/bulk-of-big-... indicates over 1 Billion additional revenue per quarter If you look deeper into the migration article, it's pointed out that they are already facing migration challenges. I wouldn't be shocked if 3 years later, there are some workloads still running on VMware, you can't easily get them off and just renews insane licensing cost for much smaller hardware footprint.

jamesfinlayson 4mo ago
Yeah I'm at a place that is kind of sucking it up, but there is a work-stream to move more stuff into the cloud and another work-stream to move more stuff on-prem but Kubernetes running on bare-metal. There's also work to stop using some component of VMware as well.
- stackskipton 4mo ago
  Sure but whole strategy is "Jack up prices by 500%, cut expenses by 70% and make more money in short term" What about the long term? Who care, massive money made and they can use that to keep going.
  - twoodfin 4mo ago
    I think Broadcom correctly realizes that no matter what they do there is no long term: In a world of Cloud hyperscalers and containerization, the absolute number of “traditional” virtual machines run by a commercial hypervisor has nowhere to go but down.
    - bigstrat2003 4mo ago
      Containers do not reduce reliance on VMs, really. Those containers still need a server to run on, and that server is almost certainly going to be a VM and not bare metal.
      - deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      - twoodfin 4mo ago
        Sure, but at that level it’s totally commoditized by the hyperscalers. VMWare brings nothing to the table.
      - nix0n 4mo ago
        > that server is almost certainly going to be a VM and not bare metal I understand that this is normal but I've never understood it. If all the containers are running the same company's applications (so they don't care about security boundaries between them), what's the difference between having all the containers under the same kernel vs separate kernels?
        wmf 4mo ago
        It's cargo culting. Even 37 Signals fell for it.
        donavanm 4mo ago
        The VM layer gives you an aspect of fungibility that commodity hardware doesn’t. It’s being able to over provision, dynamically reallocate hardware resources, or do things like live migration and entire system snapshots. That hardware/system management aspect is what VM’s give you and containers don’t. Note: if you want to conflate “containers“ with an entire job management and scheduling system (“k8s”) then you’re not actually talking about the current target customer for VMware.
        sofixa 4mo ago
        > It’s being able to over provision, dynamically reallocate hardware resources, or do things like live migration and entire system snapshots. That hardware/system management aspect is what VM’s give you and containers don’t. None of those matter in the slightest with containers. Why would you need to reallocate hardware resources when the containers can run on another piece of hardware? You would snapshot the relevant storage, not the whole OS and kitchen sink. VMs as an intermediary between hardware and containers is just a waste of resources - both directly (RAM, CPU, storage to run a useless OS with no benefit) and indirectly (all of those VM's OS needs maintaining and patching). It's basically a hold over from the olden days of "everything is a VM".
  - Spooky23 4mo ago
    They make AI crap. The future is Mars.
    - BLKNSLVR 4mo ago
      But Snickers is Mars with nuts, so it's both healthier and more filling. The future is Snickers!
  - sidewndr46 4mo ago
    Long term you roll those profits into another acquisition. Rinse and repeat. Scorched earth, no mercy
  - lokar 4mo ago
    They explained that fairly clearly
sokoloff 4mo ago
The extortionate renewal rates I saw as a gift from Broadcom. It made it very easy to price the risk of doing nothing and be sure that the cost of outages during and immediately post-migration would be lower. (Yes, we had a few, due to obscure drivers issues or an app that really wanted a specific CPU or chipset or virtual NIC, and they cost us less than 10%, probably closer to 5%, of what the proposed renewal would have cost.)
sofixa 4mo ago
> I know plenty of Enterprise customers who cannot move easily and just renewed 3 year VMware licenses for their cluster at insane rates Also known as incompetence. Broadcom's business model is public. Their plans for VMware were public from when the acquisition was announced. Those companies had years to plan how to get rid of everything VMware. Instead they paid through the nose to postpone the inevitable for a few years.

jamesfinlayson 4mo ago

Yeah I'm at a place that is kind of sucking it up, but there is a work-stream to move more stuff into the cloud and another work-stream to move more stuff on-prem but Kubernetes running on bare-metal. There's also work to stop using some component of VMware as well.

stackskipton 4mo ago
Sure but whole strategy is "Jack up prices by 500%, cut expenses by 70% and make more money in short term" What about the long term? Who care, massive money made and they can use that to keep going.
- twoodfin 4mo ago
  I think Broadcom correctly realizes that no matter what they do there is no long term: In a world of Cloud hyperscalers and containerization, the absolute number of “traditional” virtual machines run by a commercial hypervisor has nowhere to go but down.
  - bigstrat2003 4mo ago
    Containers do not reduce reliance on VMs, really. Those containers still need a server to run on, and that server is almost certainly going to be a VM and not bare metal.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - twoodfin 4mo ago
      Sure, but at that level it’s totally commoditized by the hyperscalers. VMWare brings nothing to the table.
    - nix0n 4mo ago
      > that server is almost certainly going to be a VM and not bare metal I understand that this is normal but I've never understood it. If all the containers are running the same company's applications (so they don't care about security boundaries between them), what's the difference between having all the containers under the same kernel vs separate kernels?
      - wmf 4mo ago
        It's cargo culting. Even 37 Signals fell for it.
      - donavanm 4mo ago
        The VM layer gives you an aspect of fungibility that commodity hardware doesn’t. It’s being able to over provision, dynamically reallocate hardware resources, or do things like live migration and entire system snapshots. That hardware/system management aspect is what VM’s give you and containers don’t. Note: if you want to conflate “containers“ with an entire job management and scheduling system (“k8s”) then you’re not actually talking about the current target customer for VMware.
        sofixa 4mo ago
        > It’s being able to over provision, dynamically reallocate hardware resources, or do things like live migration and entire system snapshots. That hardware/system management aspect is what VM’s give you and containers don’t. None of those matter in the slightest with containers. Why would you need to reallocate hardware resources when the containers can run on another piece of hardware? You would snapshot the relevant storage, not the whole OS and kitchen sink. VMs as an intermediary between hardware and containers is just a waste of resources - both directly (RAM, CPU, storage to run a useless OS with no benefit) and indirectly (all of those VM's OS needs maintaining and patching). It's basically a hold over from the olden days of "everything is a VM".
- Spooky23 4mo ago
  They make AI crap. The future is Mars.
  - BLKNSLVR 4mo ago
    But Snickers is Mars with nuts, so it's both healthier and more filling. The future is Snickers!
- sidewndr46 4mo ago
  Long term you roll those profits into another acquisition. Rinse and repeat. Scorched earth, no mercy
- lokar 4mo ago
  They explained that fairly clearly

sokoloff 4mo ago

The extortionate renewal rates I saw as a gift from Broadcom. It made it very easy to price the risk of doing nothing and be sure that the cost of outages during and immediately post-migration would be lower. (Yes, we had a few, due to obscure drivers issues or an app that really wanted a specific CPU or chipset or virtual NIC, and they cost us less than 10%, probably closer to 5%, of what the proposed renewal would have cost.)

sofixa 4mo ago

> I know plenty of Enterprise customers who cannot move easily and just renewed 3 year VMware licenses for their cluster at insane rates Also known as incompetence. Broadcom's business model is public. Their plans for VMware were public from when the acquisition was announced. Those companies had years to plan how to get rid of everything VMware. Instead they paid through the nose to postpone the inevitable for a few years.