As Broadcom hurls legal threats at its own customers
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Dominic Johnston has had enough of VMware.
Not too long ago, this was not the situation. Johnston, who works as an IT manager at Golding—a company involved in civil construction and mining in Australia—utilized VMware Cloud on AWS for hosting certain tasks and also for disaster recovery purposes.
Following Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, Johnston observed “a few instances of inadequate support” and various events indicated that Virtzilla’s quality of service had declined post-deal.
Next came the conflict between Broadcom and AWS, resulting in the termination of the capability to launch on-demand servers within the VMware Cloud on AWS.
Golding’s disaster recovery rig relied on elasticity, so Johnston “started getting very nervous”. VMware reassured him that disaster recovery would still work as required, but after a risk assessment and a chat with his boss, Johnston decided Golding would be better off moving to another platform, despite the work required to do so.
Johnston informed us that he is “quite enraged” with Broadcom because they implemented alterations that provided no clear advantage and forced him to replace a functioning system.
Yew Wei Kee’s response to VMware was one of disappointment. As the assistant vice president at MSIG Insurance Asia, he mentioned they had been utilizing VMware since 2007 with the release of ESX 3.0. However, after Broadcom took over, MSIG received an updated licensing proposal that would increase their costs by 300 to 400 percent. According to Kee, this offer pertained specifically to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), which encompasses a comprehensive bundle including computing, storage, and network services.
MSIG wasn’t interested in that package. According to Kee, VMware proposed a less comprehensive bundle centered around server virtualization, but it did not provide the 24/7 support that MSIG requires.
Despite their extensive background with VMware, the insurer’s efforts amounted to nothing, and Kee believed MSIG would struggle to establish a suitable partnership with Broadcom.
MSIG was previously utilizing Nutanix and has since transitioned its complete set of between 1,500 to 2,000 Nutanix virtual machines entirely over.
Golding moved to Nutanix too, adopting NC2 clusters in AWS. The outfit has done so for just a year or two, as it plans a full migration to EC2, but feels the temporary arrangement is worth it.
Johnston informed The Register that the transition process was straightforward, and he managed to remain uninvolved over the weekend when it occurred.
Paradoxically, just when the migration finished, he received a call from a VMware account manager who presented himself as his new liaison—unaware that Johnston had already intended to terminate Golding’s connection with the Broadcom division.
During this week’s Nutanix’s Next conference, The Register had an encounter with Johnston and Kee. At the event, both the U.S. Navy and financial institution Moody’s shared their experiences of migrating from VMware.
Rajiv Ramaswami, the CEO of Nutanix, informed The Register that they managed to secure Moody’s as a customer only after opting to alter their approach and begin offering support for external storage.
Ramaswami stated that Nutanix continues to hold the belief that software-defined storage outperforms others, yet this shift indicates that user preferences do not readily evolve when it comes to altering their foundational system designs. To remain pertinent to an expanded customer base—especially those who have been let down or angered by VMware—it was crucial for Nutanix to tackle the realm of external storage solutions.
Nutanix is attracting VMware customers by improving their migration tools. These enhancements allow for the replication of firewall rules directly from VMware’s NSX software-defined networking platform and enable workload transfers without needing “swing hardware” to accommodate virtual machines during the transition.
As a direct competitor of VMware, Nutanix naturally wants to criticize its rival and is leveraging its conference for this purpose.
However, VMware is equally effective at frustrating its customer base independently. Reports indicate delayed or inadequate support services, along with ongoing issues with Broadcom’s support portal being unreliable.
The virtualization desk at The Register has received feedback from VMware clients stating that their distributors have instructions not to provide pricing details for lower-tier products unless approved by Broadcom. It appears particularly challenging to obtain quotations for vSphere Standard, which is tailored primarily towards fundamental server virtualization tasks. Some users report delays with receiving these price estimates, often just a few days prior to when current agreements come to an end.
Customers believe these tactics are intended to coerce them into making purchases, or they see it as an indication that they’re unwelcome unless they accept VCF.
A number of VMware users have opted out of subscribing to Broadcom’s software packages and instead stick with their current perpetual licenses. However, Broadcom refuses to offer these customers support unless they agree to receive only essential security updates.
Recently, some individuals in similar circumstances have received cease-and-desist communications from Broadcom, mandating them to undo modifications implemented following the expiration of their support contracts.
Such requests are legally OK – after all, a contract is a contract.
However, Broadcom had the opportunity to make it simpler for clients to remain compliant by revoking access to these updates after their support contracts expired. It has been reported numerous times by paying members that Broadcom’s support portal continues to be unreliable, possibly explaining why individuals without active contracts can still obtain the necessary patches.
Nutanix isn’t the only company recognizing an opening due to Broadcom’s stubbornness. Both Red Hat and HPE have developed their own server virtualization solutions, Citrix has made a comeback into this space, and smaller HCI companies such as Scale Computing remain energetic competitors. Additionally, open-source initiatives like XCP-NG and Proxmox continue to gain momentum.
Broadcom continues to maintain that adoption of VCF quickly pays for itself, says most of its customers have adopted VCF, and that VMware revenue is growing fast, and that the forthcoming VCF version 9 will prove it by delivering many new features and enhancements. ®
