[Info-vax] Broadcom ends availablility of the free edition ESXi Hypervisor

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/13/2024 8:28 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2024-02-12, Chris Townley <news at cct-net.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 12/02/2024 18:42, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
>>> be aware Broadcom have now removed the free edition download:
>>>
>>> https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
>>>
>>>   From that document:
>>>
>>> |Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
>>> |decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
>>> |of General Availability).
>>>
>>
>> Surely nobody will be surprised...
> 
> To be honest Chris, given their reputation, I am surprised it took them
> as long as it did. :-(
> 
> I suspect that by the time Broadcom get through with this, people will
> regard IBM's mainframe licencing as a model of liberal licencing by
> comparison. :-)
> 
> The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
> most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
> of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.
> 
> _If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are alternatives,
> this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation
> of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.
> 
> IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term
> approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came
> to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

I find it difficult to see the point in that acquisition and
such a strategy.

Broadcom paid 61 B$ for a VMWare that had a profit of 1.3 B$
in 2023.

Those numbers does not work.

And VMWare's core business are facing serious challenges.

A lot of workload are moving to AWS/Azure/GCP that does not use
ESXi.

Even some of the on-prem workload is moving to k8s on bare metal
instead of k8s on ESXi VM.

If Broadcom had acquired VMWare years ago for peanuts (EMC
paid 625 M$ for VMWare 20 years ago!), then a philosophy of
"this product is dying - let us reduce all investment to zero
increase prices like crazy and milk the last profit out of
the market" could make sense.

But Broadcom need to recoup 61 B$. The "starve and milk"
approach will not get them 61 B$.

Arne