Amid Broadcom's subscription push, VMware killed a SaaS product
- Reference: 1706074269
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/01/24/vmware_subscriptions_evolve/
- Source link:
The axed product is Aria SaaS, a cloudy version of VMware's Aria management tools (which were previously sold under the "vRealize" brand).
VMware by Broadcom last week [1]decided to stop selling the Saas-y suite because it's bundled Aria into its vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation offerings. Both can be run on-prem or in SaaS mode in several clouds.
[2]
Shuttering the SaaS service is consistent with Broadcom's decision to sell only bundles of VMware products, plus add-ons for extra capabilities. But it also unwinds VMware's past strategy of offering some of its tools as SaaS to relieve users of the need to manage infrastructure. Indeed, VMware touted its SaaS offerings as in many ways superior to its packaged products, partly because delivering them as SaaS meant it could innovate more quickly.
[3]
[4]
Broadcom reckons killing off Aria SaaS will have the upside of prompting its partners to offer Aria as-a-service by deploying its Cloud Foundation suite.
Aria SaaS was one of 59 products that VMware stopped selling as standalone offerings last week. Not all were bundled into VMware by Broadcom's new suites. That absence doesn't necessarily denote death: some of the discontinued products were themselves bundles.
[5]Veeam researching support for VMware alternative Proxmox as backup buyers fret about Broadcom
[6]Broadcom ditches VMware Cloud Service Providers
[7]VMware's end-user compute products are for sale. Who might buy 'em?
[8]Xen Project improves the art of virtual machine maintenance with annual hypervisor release
VMware by Broadcom delivered news of the mass demise in a knowledgebase article.
Interestingly, on Monday the business unit [9]replaced the article with a blog post that assured users of the axed products that there is "no immediate action required at this time."
[10]
"VMware will continue to offer active support through the duration of your support contract. In the future, at the time of renewal, you can work with your VMware representative or VMware partner to align your go forward requirements to VMware's updated portfolio of offerings."
VMware by Broadcom's catchphrase to justify its recent changes is "This portfolio simplification will allow customers to extract more value from their VMware investment and enable VMware to accelerate delivery of new innovations and ease both deployment and management for customers."
VMware customers are yet to see evidence of either outcome. Indeed, The Register has read many accounts of users who feel the cost of their VMware products has effectively increased because of their only being offered in bundles that include more products than they want to use. Just how that equates to "more value" is hard to understand – especially for users who want to persist with Aria SaaS, but face a migration project to move from one source of the service to another. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2024/01/dramatic-simplification-of-vmware-aria-as-part-of-vmware-cloud-foundation.html
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/virtualization&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZbDt2M0SVtuT7XcQwnUeugAAAQY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/virtualization&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZbDt2M0SVtuT7XcQwnUeugAAAQY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/virtualization&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZbDt2M0SVtuT7XcQwnUeugAAAQY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/22/veeam_proxmox_oracle_support/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/10/broadcom_ends_vmware_partner_program/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/19/vmware_euc_sale_speculation/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/20/xen_project_4_18/
[9] https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2024/01/22/vmware-end-of-availability-of-perpetual-licensing-and-saas-services/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/virtualization&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZbDt2M0SVtuT7XcQwnUeugAAAQY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: I'm wondering...
Broadcom clearly feel that most of VMWare's profits come from just a tiny fraction of their customers, so are laser-focused on those select customers and want to get shot of all the others as they're just "overhead".
As a supplier, I'd want as broader range of customers as possible. That way problems with one class of customer will have less of an impact on my business. But I'm just low-life techie and not the boss of a multi-billion/multi-national company so clearly I don't know what I'm talking about.
PS
Back in the 80s or 90s (in the UK), there was a car parts supplier who were the sole supplier to a car manufacturer for one component. The manufacturer screwed the price right down until the supplier went bust. The liquidator knew the manufacturer's production line would stop withouth the part and and kept the supplier trading for a few months by raising the cost of the parts by a very large amount (something like trippling the cost) The car manufacturer went to court claiming the price rise was unfair and the court threw the case out. It took the car manufacturer several months to find another supplier for the part they needed. In the mean time, the manufacturer had to pay the higher cost until the new suppliers came online.
My search engine skills are failing me, so I can't provide a link to this. My suspicion is that Ford were the car manufacturer.
Just "overhead"
That's only a sustainable strategy in a mature market - you would otherwise hope that at least a proportion of your less-profitable customers would grow to be of more future value. And it does seem that indeed is how Broadcom sees this product line.
I'm less convinced that virtualisation is now "done" and that there isn't really any scope for much further innovation: there virtualisation/containerisation space would still seem to have a distance to go.
But I suppose if they can make enough money to justify the purchase, why risk it by innovating speculatively?
I'm wondering...
... Just how long it'll take for Broadcom to completely kill VMware off, once they realise they've lost so much of their acquired customer base (let's face it, it's not as if they're attracting any new customers) that they are no longer profitable.