VMware Customers May Stay, But Broadcom Could Face Backlash 'For Years To Come' (arstechnica.com) 25
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After acquiring VMware, Broadcom swiftly enacted widespread changes that resulted in strong public backlash. A new survey of 300 director-level IT workers at companies that are customers of North American VMware provides insight into the customer reaction to Broadcom's overhaul. The survey released Thursday doesn't provide feedback from every VMware customer, but it's the first time we've seen responses from IT decision-makers working for companies paying for VMware products. It echos concerns expressed at the announcement of some of Broadcom's more controversial changes to VMware, like the end of perpetual licenses and growing costs. [...] Every person surveyed said that they expect VMware prices to rise under Broadcom. In a March "User Group Town Hall," attendees complained about "price rises of 500 and 600 percent," according to The Register. We heard in February from ServeTheHome that "smaller" cloud service providers were claiming to see costs grow tenfold. In this week's survey, 73 percent of respondents said they expect VMware prices to more than double. Twelve percent of respondents expect a price hike of 301 to 500 percent. Only 1 percent anticipate price hikes of 501 to 1,000 percent. "At this juncture post-acquisition, most larger enterprises seem to have a clear understanding of how their next procurement cycle with Broadcom will be impacted from a pricing and packaging standpoint," the report noted.
Further, 95 percent of survey respondents said they view Broadcom buying VMware as disruptive to their IT strategy, with 46 percent considering it extremely or very disruptive. Widespread concerns about cost and IT strategy help explain why 99 percent of the 300 respondents said they are concerned about Broadcom owning VMware, with 46 percent being "very concerned" and 30 percent "extremely concerned." Despite widespread anxiety over Broadcom's VMware, most of the respondents said they will likely stay with VMware either partially (43 percent of respondents) or fully (40 percent). A smaller percentage of respondents said they would move more workloads to the public cloud (38 percent) or a different hypervisor (34 percent) or move entirely to the public cloud (33 percent). This is with 69 percent of respondents having at least one contract expiring with VMware within the next 12 months. [...] Top reasons cited for considering abandoning VMware partially or totally were uncertainty about Broadcom's plans, concerns about support quality under Broadcom, and changes to relationships with channel partners (each named by 36 percent of respondents). Following closely was the shift to subscription licensing (34 percent), expected price bumps (33 percent), and personal negative experiences with Broadcom (33 percent). Broadcom's history with big buys like Symantec and CA Technologies also has 32 percent of people surveyed considering leaving VMware. "The emotional shock has started to metabolize inside of the Broadcom customer base, but it's metabolized in the form of strong commitment to mitigating the negative impacts of the Broadcom VMware acquisition," said Kyle Campos, CTPO for CloudBolt Software, the company that commissioned the study.
He warned that Broadcom could see backlash continue "for months and even years to come."
Further, 95 percent of survey respondents said they view Broadcom buying VMware as disruptive to their IT strategy, with 46 percent considering it extremely or very disruptive. Widespread concerns about cost and IT strategy help explain why 99 percent of the 300 respondents said they are concerned about Broadcom owning VMware, with 46 percent being "very concerned" and 30 percent "extremely concerned." Despite widespread anxiety over Broadcom's VMware, most of the respondents said they will likely stay with VMware either partially (43 percent of respondents) or fully (40 percent). A smaller percentage of respondents said they would move more workloads to the public cloud (38 percent) or a different hypervisor (34 percent) or move entirely to the public cloud (33 percent). This is with 69 percent of respondents having at least one contract expiring with VMware within the next 12 months. [...] Top reasons cited for considering abandoning VMware partially or totally were uncertainty about Broadcom's plans, concerns about support quality under Broadcom, and changes to relationships with channel partners (each named by 36 percent of respondents). Following closely was the shift to subscription licensing (34 percent), expected price bumps (33 percent), and personal negative experiences with Broadcom (33 percent). Broadcom's history with big buys like Symantec and CA Technologies also has 32 percent of people surveyed considering leaving VMware. "The emotional shock has started to metabolize inside of the Broadcom customer base, but it's metabolized in the form of strong commitment to mitigating the negative impacts of the Broadcom VMware acquisition," said Kyle Campos, CTPO for CloudBolt Software, the company that commissioned the study.
He warned that Broadcom could see backlash continue "for months and even years to come."
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:4)
Maybe but even short sighted executives have some concerns about q1 +1y. The problem with a sinking ship is tha ALL off the rats want to get off the boat, not just the ones under water.
Vmware through my rearview mirror (Score:2)
Re: Vmware through my rearview mirror (Score:2)
Open source alternatives (Score:1)
I suspect that most VMware applications could be replaced by Xen / Docker / etc - unless they want to run old versions of DOS, OS/2, Windows, etc. I mucked around with VMware years ago, but never found a true need for it. Pretty much all my coding is for Linux and Docker containers did most everything we needed.
Re:Open source alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe docker is good enough for you, but docker doesn't provide a true isolated environment.
Also with docker, its not very robust to changes, at least by default.
You're at the mercy of the package repo(s) and packages/exact versions that your docker file uses being always available.
Re: (Score:2)
An enterprise admin that wants just jump into docker can easily handle these concerns. Docker has become very robust and secure. It's not a replacement for full VMs where they are needed but for some takes it's quite a bit better. I wouldn't put Docker and full hypervisers directly in the same conversation though, I don't think docker is any sort of threat to vmware. Those considering a jump to docker are doing so basically without any pressure from vmware's changes. IMO.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
This won't happen for one simple reason: lack of contractual support. Without that, even if a company's staff is perfectly capable of using one of the above, it won't be allowed.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not sure what this is in regards to. Red Hat has commercial KVM support. Proxmox has commercial VE support. Docker has commercial support. Xenserver has commercial support.
What might hold vmware together is inertia, but if they hurt the bottom line too much or seem to unreliable policy wise there are a number of great options to put in place with solid enterprise support etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Xen support can be obtained from Citrix, Oracle, SUSE.
Proxmox support can be obtained from Proxmox, Turnkey Linux
Re: (Score:2)
If Broadcom's strategy was to focus on small time developers mucking around, I suppose their multi-billion dollar business would be at risk. But they don't, so they aren't.
Re: (Score:3)
If Broadcom's strategy was to focus on small time developers mucking around, I suppose their multi-billion dollar business would be at risk. But they don't, so they aren't.
That's true. However, 5-6x price hikes are also very significant and would trigger consideration of alternatives. Broadcom's primary concern is money. Unfortunately for Broadcom, money is also a primary concern for their customers.
Onramp (Score:3)
The trouble is, those small time developers mucking around end up becoming IT professionals who recommend solutions to the more business-oriented managers. Providing ESXi for free meant you had plenty of people comfortable with it after mucking around with it in their home labs. The next generation won't be cutting their teeth on VMware ESXi, it'll be something else.
FWIW, VMware Workstation originally gained a lot of traction from tech-savvy Linux users pirating it in order to run the Windows applications
Re:Open source alternatives (Score:5, Interesting)
If you need to archive a whole environment with OS and installed software - you need a VM. (E.g. build or release systems for (legacy) software. Dumbly going "we can't build hot fix since build env was discontinued by vendor" doesn't cut it.)
If you need to pack gazillion OSs on fewest possible number of servers - you need a VM. (E.g. testing. Bonus: easy reset whole OS to its vanilla state after use.)
If you need a distributeable environment with pre-installed everything independent of the host OS/etc - you need a VM. (E.g. stable distro of large software collections. Or everybody in large team spends days installing and configuring everything, only to end up with dozens of deviating installations.)
There are plenty of use-cases for VMs.
Docker is nice, fast and all, but it's just entirely different use-cases.
Re: (Score:2)
>"There are plenty of use-cases for VMs. Docker is nice, fast and all, but it's just entirely different use-cases."
I agree, that is why he also suggested Xen (XCP-ng/Xen Orchestra). Modern, feature-packed, free, well-known, based on the long-trusted Xen hypervisor, open-source, commercial support options:
https://xcp-ng.org/ [xcp-ng.org]
https://xen-orchestra.com/ [xen-orchestra.com]
Proxmox and you don't need to pay anything! (Score:3)
Proxmox and you don't need to pay anything!
Too late... we're gone (Score:3)
You don't get second chances after BS like this.
"VMware Customers May Stay" (Score:3)