Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Businesses Cloud Software

Broadcom To 'Focus On Rapid Transition To Subscription' For VMware (theregister.com) 68

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
Broadcom has signaled its $61 billion acquisition of VMware will involve a "rapid transition from perpetual licenses to subscriptions." The Register reports: That's according to Tom Krause, president of the Broadcom Software Group, on Thursday's Broadcom earnings call. He was asked how the semiconductor giant plans to deliver on its guidance that VMware will add approximately $8.5 billion of pro forma EBITDA to Broadcom within three years of the deal closing -- significant growth given VMware currently produces about $4.7 billion. And subscriptions was the answer. Krause also repeatedly said Broadcom intends to invest in VMware's key product portfolio and is pleased to be acquiring a sales organization and channel relationships that give it reach Broadcom does not currently enjoy. [...]

Krause and Broadcom CEO Hock Tan both said Broadcom plans to nurture VMware's 300,000-plus customer base. The move to subscription-based licensing will apparently happen over the course of the next few years. [...] VMware may also experience slower growth in the short term due to the licensing shift. Krause said Broadcom is willing to live with lower margins for VMware than it expects from CA and Symantec, with R&D to benefit as a result. The software boss pledged ongoing investment and innovation for VMware's core infrastructure products, naming vSphere, VSAN, vRealize and NSX as the subjects of ongoing love and attention
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Broadcom To 'Focus On Rapid Transition To Subscription' For VMware More

Broadcom To 'Focus On Rapid Transition To Subscription' For VMware

Comments Filter:
  • Nobody could have seen this coming.

    • Re:Shocking (Score:5, Insightful)

      by JenovaSynthesis ( 528503 ) on Friday May 27, 2022 @06:31PM (#62571662)

      Just like nobody will see the massive switch to other software too...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        Yep. "subscriptions." Do not want.
        • Eh. Might as well start switching to OracleVM. It is free. Absolutely free.
          • "Look, they KILLED VMware! It seems like we can save money by porting our VMs to Azure cloud."
            • Watch the great VMware Product Manager and Engineering exodus. GCP is hiring like CRAZY to build an operations framework and infrastructure stack that costs less and simpler to operate. Then there's Amazon Outpost, for the on-prem diehards. It'll take a couple years, because changing ops is hard, but there is the direction for enterprises.

          • Careful. It's a trap. Because VirtualBox absolutely needs the very much non-free (as in beer AND speech) Oracle VirtualBox extensions to be minimally usable. Which Oracle makes it VERY easy to download and use. And then end up owing it thousands of dollars that you had NO IDEA you had thereby agreed to pay.

            It's not atypical if you're used to how Oracle does extortion^H^H^H^Hbusiness, but if not, well, you're better off avoiding it, even if the only other reasonable choice is a different proprietary VM i

        • Agreed. I won't go subscription unless I have literally no other reasonable choice

          But a LOT of proprietary software is going this way.

          Adding yet another reason to depend, as much as possible, on FOSS, or at the very least, open and portable and non-vendor-locked data formats.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by farrellj ( 563 )

        Looks like Broadcom will pull a Novell...Netware literally owned the market for LAN networking, then blew it. Broadcom has, or will soon own VMware, which like Netware has the largest market share in their sector. If they change over to a subscription model, the long time established users of this type of software will no longer be looking at the cost periodic upgrades, but will be "hemorrhaging" money every month, and will not be able to schedule investments when it is best for them, not best for when Broa

        • Re:Shocking (Score:5, Interesting)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot&worf,net> on Friday May 27, 2022 @09:44PM (#62571960)

          Looks like Broadcom will pull a Novell...Netware literally owned the market for LAN networking, then blew it. Broadcom has, or will soon own VMware, which like Netware has the largest market share in their sector. If they change over to a subscription model, the long time established users of this type of software will no longer be looking at the cost periodic upgrades, but will be "hemorrhaging" money every month, and will not be able to schedule investments when it is best for them, not best for when Broadcom needs another infusion of cash. This will certainly drive companies to other technologies, most of which are free and open source based...

          Technically, Microsoft blew it.

          Novell was it, but the problem was Windows 95. Microsoft kept stuff from Novell such that it really wasn't possible for Novell to make a Windows 95 client. Instead, Microsoft made a Novell client for Windows 95, and they made it as sh*tty as possible, both to kill Novell and to encourage people to move from Novell to Windows NT Server. Novell basically died because they couldn't get a client out in time that supported Windows 95 and people gave up and transitioned to Windows NT. Remember, this was the 90s where Microsoft was involved in all sorts of shady things to kill the competition, and Novell was one that was holding back Windows NT Server. After all, what did we migrate to in the end? Windows Networking, aka SMB.

          Anyhow, I doubt this will kill very many VMWare users - the thing is, most people using VMWare aren't buying it and that's it, they're buying VMWare licenses and ongoing support. And support is a subscription. The only difference is at the end of the day, if you fail to renew support, you lose it, while on a subscription, you lose access to the software as well. But for companies, this isn't a big deal - because for many products, once you forget to renew support, the catch up fee can be substantial. I've seen it where you had to buy another software license to replace the one out of support, to other times basically paying a fee equal to the time you were off support (e.g., if you were off for a couple of years, the fee would be two year's worth of support), and others may just have a fixed "get back in support" fee.

          And sure, you can lose updates - and often companies fail to make old versions available, so if you didn't back up the installer, you can't use the software anymore.

          For enterprises, subscriptions aren't a big deal. VMWare's clients are probably mostly Enterprise clients anyways - few people bought into the personal editions to really matter to VMWare. Especially since non-enterprise class virtualization is basically free - between VirtualBox, HyperV and others.

          It's probably not a market VMWare will bother caring about anymore - good on you to switch to KVM or other thing - that's not going to be VMWare's primary client base.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by chihowa ( 366380 )

            For enterprises, subscriptions aren't a big deal. VMWare's clients are probably mostly Enterprise clients anyways - few people bought into the personal editions to really matter to VMWare. Especially since non-enterprise class virtualization is basically free - between VirtualBox, HyperV and others.

            It's probably not a market VMWare will bother caring about anymore - good on you to switch to KVM or other thing - that's not going to be VMWare's primary client base.

            From TFS, though: "He was asked how the semiconductor giant plans to deliver on its guidance that VMware will add approximately $8.5 billion of pro forma EBITDA to Broadcom within three years of the deal closing -- significant growth given VMware currently produces about $4.7 billion."

            He expects to nearly double their revenue just by switching to subscriptions. Aside from subscriptions being a PITA to deal with on the purchasing side (which they are), it sounds like VMWare products are about to cost nearly

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by torkus ( 1133985 )

          Couldn't agree more.

          I get why companies love subscription models - recurring, regular revenue. Fine...but.

          Far too many companies DON'T want to upgrade on the regular. They do the opposite and skip rounds to save money. This takes away that option and ... while in the business plan for the vendor it looks promising, it's actually a net-negative because many companies are simply too cheap to play this game without actual, tangible, benefit.

          O365? Sure. You get online services and storage and security.

          Acm

        • One needs only to look at how Broadcom treated existing customers of other IP portfolios that they've purchased in the past to see how this will play out. Go ask an enterprise customer of CA products about their experiences after the acquisition by Broadcom.

          The rush to the exit will be reality for companies that are nimble enough to make the switch to other platforms. However, there is a captive "muffin top" of enterprise customers out there that are literally stuck with the VMWare stack for the foreseeab

    • Yep. Broadcom is on the verge of 'laying an egg' by slowly killing off the goose (VMware) that lays golden eggs (generates lots of cash).

      Way to go Broadcom! Show us all how you acquire a valuable property and then drive it into the ground like a slumlord millionaire.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Necron69 ( 35644 )

        VMware is more of a potential golden goose than a real one. For all their revenue, they have an pretty low profit margin - only about 12.65%. You start to wonder what those ~30k employees are actually doing, and it becomes obvious why they are a takeover target.

        Expect some serious layoffs when the merger completes, in an attempt to improve that margin. I've lived through the Broadcom acquisition process, and it isn't fun. Broadcom runs _insanely_ lean, but if you survive, the compensation is really, really

  • Next rapid transition: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh@@@gmail...com> on Friday May 27, 2022 @06:47PM (#62571694) Journal

    I predict the whole tech industry will soon focus on a rapid transition from VMware to something based on KVM or VirtualBox core...

    • You have that scent of Larry Ellison, too, eh?

      Unless VMware can lead a next-gen product, a subscription model levels off their base with a lead weight. Yes, investments have a cycle, but containerization and fractional processing have become too popular.

      Only the service level agreement remains as a value, and given the long list of VMware zero-days in the past year, skeptics will lean away from the sheer complexity of it all.

      Hypervisors are dying. High availability is strong, but with the ease of replicatin

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I already did this years ago after using VMware for a very long time (I was one of the original beta testers of Workstation before it was ever released).

      The writing was on the wall for VMware with all the buyouts and policy changes. That wasn't the only issue though. I was becoming increasingly worried about possible backdoors in closed systems. It happens way too often these days to ignore. If someone could backdoor the virtual system itself, good god.

      VirtualBox is better but not much since they also have

    • Considering that most enterprise level OSes tend to want at least per core licensing, the sudden requirement to pay to "create" those cores is a second double dip that no sane company is going to want. Broadcom must be profit drunk if they think they will get away with this.

      In my personal opinion, this is just another entry in a long list of examples of why enterprise level software companies have run their course. They don't create anything anymore. They simply want to get paid for granting permission to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      How does VirtualBox compare these days? Last time I used it the USB support on a Windows host was terrible, but that was several years ago now.

      • I can't speak to that but I can say I'm disappointed (as a free user who they have no incentive to support, heh heh) in the progress in the D3D layer. It doesn't seem to be moving as fast as it used to.

      • Please steer clear of VirtualBox. It is the bait for a simple but very effective and expensive extortion racket involving the Guest Extensions, which I've described in a few comments above this one.

    • I won't touch VirtualBox with someone else's ten foot pole. If you do, you end up paying for VirtualBox Guest Extensions, and hard.

      The one is almost unusable without the other, and Oracle makes it very easy to download and install the extensions without necessarily noticing the license terms that indicate that it is a paid, proprietary, commercial product, even though VirtualBox itself is not.

      So if you get it that way, as I did once by accident, and as I understand most people do, Oracle then comes at you,

      • The core package doesn't require guest extensions, I imagine there would be an open-source replacement for those pretty quickly if needed as a replacement for price-gougey VMware licenses.

        • In my admittedly limited experience, no, technically, it doesn't "require" them, unless you want to use a mouse, or switch back and forth between the guest and host UI, or copy and paste between guest and host. The moment you do, you're hooked.

          Like I said, it's very nearly unusable without the guest extensions.

          Anyone with more experience than myself disagree? Has anyone found good workarounds for not having the extensions?

          • You can use a mouse and switch between guest and host UIs without guest extensions, you just need to use a hotkey instead of merely moving the mouse outside the window. Not sure about copying and pasting.

  • KVM on linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rtkluttz ( 244325 ) on Friday May 27, 2022 @06:51PM (#62571708) Homepage

    I have 123 sites running Vmware ESXi in a home grown solution without using VSphere. I'll be on KVM on linux before they can bat an eye if they move to SAAS model. I don't pay for software or hardware as a service and spend a significant amount of time and effort avoiding 3rd party, off site hosted cloud and any software or hardware where you pay monthly or yearly forever and ever amen. I have made my career on giving companies that I have worked for an alternative to that shit.

    • As far as competitors go, Proxmox or oVirt would be a good substitute for ESX. Both are KVM based, support High Availability Clustering, and can run locally. Proxmox has subscription level support if it's in your needs in addition to other features. (Backup server, email security) If pure OSS is what you want, oVirt will work just fine. oVirt was RedHat's competitor to ESX, but they are in the process of dumping it on the community for a K8s based offering instead.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skogs ( 628589 )

        I actually greatly prefer the proxmox user interface. It isn't PRETTY ... but it is significantly more functional in many work flows.
        I LOVE proxmox.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gmack ( 197796 )

          I love Proxmox, I just wish it had better support for shared storage on SAN. For at least one of my projects, that was a deal breaker.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by dranga ( 520457 )
        Our company mostly switched from VMware to KVM/Ovirt over the last 2 years, we're about 85% on kvm now.. and it sounds like this news will be more pressure to move further off vmware where we can.

    • And these will be companies / sites you will be maintaining forever because the industry standard is vmware and you will never be able to find other support people to support your homegrown hodgepodge which you can never take a vacation from.

      Oh yeah sounds so much easier, and less fault prone, than paying a few dollars (of not your own money!) for maintenance.

      I had to recover one of those sites once from someone who had a brain anuerism and kept no notes. Took way longer than it should have to figure out hi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by short ( 66530 )
        virt-manager/KVM is the standard. I have no idea what I would do with a machine with some VMware. It all depends.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      Not so fast. Do a cat on /proc/cpuinfo. You'll see that under esxi you're able to see the real processor. It's awesome. Run kvm. I get stuck with penryn or some other sucky old Intel POS processor. Performance is nothing like with esxi. Unless you know something I don't. Hope you do.

      If there's a good alternative it'll be another golden goose being killed by probably a MBA.

  • IOW (Score:2)

    by msauve ( 701917 )
    " Broadcom plans to nurture VMware's 300,000-plus customer base."

    So, force adults to suck off the teat, to put it bluntly.

    • Plan is to dramatically raise prices, but first deploy the sales crew to wine and dine the CIO types...Bold & innovative leadership Broadcom.

      Also nice of them to give a heads-up of the super secret plan to install over-priced subscriptions. Plenty of lead time for the technical Director-types to work on a migration plan off of VMWare.

  • RIP. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Friday May 27, 2022 @07:09PM (#62571742)
    RIP VMware, The end was coming but I just didn't think it would be this soon

  • Perpetual licenses make sense for on-premises computers that lack Ethernet ports. We passed that 30 years ago, yet perpetual licenses seem to hang on. Operating software connected to the Internet (to spell it out -- with the security vulnerabilities that introduces) without a maintenance agreement is -- or should be -- criminal. That includes every copy of Microsoft Windows (unless it's a kiosk with no Wi-Fi).

    If Microsoft would just force everyone into monthly maintenance for Windows, the whole world could

    • Broadcom would like to thank you for your service, Marketing drone #91262. Where should they send the check?

      Perpetual licenses are the standard because people don't want to rent software that they depend on for critical functions. The reason no one patches anything themselves is because the licenses, perpetual or subscription, often prohibit modifying the code. The reason no one patches anything through Auto-Updates any more is because the big corps abused it to the point that people would turn it off to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      If Microsoft would just force everyone into monthly maintenance for Windows, the whole world could avoid end-of-life Windows issues on critical systems such as medical equipment.

      Nonsense. Or do you really think hardware that was enough for Windows XP would run any of the current offerings? What would happen instead is that the expensive MRI machine just stops working.

    • Having a private for profit company control such as important server infrastructure is criminal. They should be nationalized and forced to open source and maintain their code. We shouldn't have to pay for something that is essential to most data centres.

      Its a no brainer really.

    • If Microsoft would just force everyone into monthly maintenance for Windows, the whole world could avoid end-of-life Windows issues on critical systems such as medical equipment.

      How do I tell people I know nothing about software or computers without saying I know nothing about software or computers?

    • Umm . . . who pays for testing the safety-critical software and equipment against those updates? And who is liable if an update breaks them and kills someone?

      The better solution BY FAR is that those types of systems should be completely airgapped from the public Internet, and should run an open-source or at least source-available OS so that everything critical to the safe, secure, and proper functioning of the device can at least theoretically be audited.

  • XCP-ng with Xen Orchestra [xcp-ng.org] works great as a Xen based type-1 hypervisor opensource free solution with web based management.

  • Not that this is in any way unexpected.

  • It will encourage piracy. Won't be too long before new babies will be told they are renting their bodies and have to submit to lifelong slavery to pay off their debt.

Slashdot Top Deals

You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.

Close