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

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/13/2024 9:49 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/13/2024 8:28 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> 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$. The "starve and milk"
> approach will not get them 61 B$.

Mostly off-topic, but another crazy acquisition involving a company
we know are heading to the court room (again):

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/12/hpe_autonomy_damages/

Arne