Broadcom has won. 70 percent of large VMware customers bought its biggest bundle

[rntn]

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/07/broadcom_q1_fy2025/

[DaSHacka]

For now, at least, until the current wave of new grads enter industry and lean towards other offerings due to a lack of familiarity with VMWare.

It's been completely stripped out from the majority of academic programs due to the death of the affordable educational license, and oftentimes replaced with XCP-NG.

Many student clubs have switched to other options too.

[CaffeineLD50]

Or "30% immediately canceled and an unknown % are in the process of evaluating proxmox etc".

Those 70% are almost certainly not happy about it, and even if they're not making good progress on a POC or migration, some vendor may be cooking up a nice FOSS play for that 70% (and the 30% may be fueling the expansion and maturity of alternatives).

It ain't over til the weight challenged CIS gendered female sings.

[giuliomagnifico]

Broadcom's handling of VMware after the acquisition has been poor. However Broadcom is an excellent company, a bit "forgotten" compared to Nvidia or TSMC

[bryanlarsen → giuliomagnifico]

Excellent at getting their patents inserted into standards and leeching off everybody.

[giuliomagnifico → bryanlarsen]

Yes, true, ideally it isn't a positive thing but in fact, from the business side, it's excellent because that way they have the majority of the market, made up of old clients and new ones who will use that standard. The important thing is that the antitrust acts in case Broadcom "expands itself" too much with acquisitions on other markets.

Now I think that most of the network hardware in server farms around the world is produced or managed by Broadcom. So from their point of view, it's not bad, obviously it has all the limitations of super-large companies, but I am comparing it to Nvidia or TSMC, that are even more "big + bad".

[drpossum → giuliomagnifico]

No.

[onewheeltom → giuliomagnifico]

It’s a hedge fund that owns patents

[woleium]

For now. Enterprise cannot change in the time given after the license change notification without significant risk, and will happily pay to offset this risk, temporarily. This will last for 3-5 years, as suitable alternatives are evaluated and migration plans are implemented.

[znpy → woleium]

i'm on the same side as you, but then again 3-5 years for client companies also mean 3-5 years for broadcom/vmware.

Maybe in 3-5 years they can come up with something to justify their new price tag. Maybe.