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

[Chris Townley]

On 13/02/2024 14:52, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> 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

At least in the UK, we have a legal principle of caveat emptor, which 
implies HP should have dug deeper


-- 
Chris