It’s a song that’s been played so many times the record is starting to get worn out.
Big manufacturer buys software company.
Big manufacturer does not understand software business, software company, or software company’s customers.
Big manufacturer makes a bunch of cost reductions based on incorrect assumptions.
Big shot at big corp customer calls peon (like me) at budget time to ask why we spend so much money on this “VMWare”.
Peon explains that "VMWare is very important software which used to be “Best in Class” but has become “Overpriced, second rate, yada yada…” And suggests we switch to Hyper-V.
Big shot asks (a little suspiciously) if we would save money without any negative impact to operations.
Peon says, “Yes.”
Big shot writes big check to Microsoft.
Other big shot at big manufacturer is stuck trying to figure out where all the customers went; not realizing that big manufacturer pissed all over the peons who actually have to use their [now] shitty software.
Big manufacturer decides the acquisition was a failure, learns nothing from it, and sells the shell of the once popular software company for a fraction of what they paid for it.
I’m not so sure the VMWare/Broadcom story is as much ignorance as many are, but rather intentional. They see the big bucks are in the large cloud providers, and knowing it’s not easy to switch away from your current virtualization, they can bend them over a barrel for a year or two and see massive profit gains. Those providers may consider transitioning to other products, but VMware will lock them in with new contracts first.
And for the resellers and SMB customers, it’s pennies compared to the cloud providers.
Fine, I can see the SMB space embracing things like Proxmox/KVM. It runs on x86 hardware, so if we see companies like Dell providing on server hardware, it’s game over in the SMB space for VMware. Imagine having to choose to renew a VMware license for 30% more, or just build new hosts running Proxmox, and transition. Especially since all hardware has a limited lifespan, often 3-5 years in SMB. So a server replacement is just around the corner… Good time to transition.
SMB has hit the point of being the “next market”. There’s a smaller set of enterprise environments, many more SMB’s, and there’s more volatility in the SMB space. So being able to support them, and manage mergers, etc, without worrying about licensing, is a huge benefit. Licensing in SMB is a hellscape, especially when dealing with mergers/transitions.
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