Research suggests more than half of VMware customers are looking to move
- Reference: 1726058707
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/09/11/civo_vmware_research/
- Source link:
The VMware rival has an ax to grind here. CEO Mark Boost [1]told El Reg earlier this year that Broadcom's strategy appeared to consist of ditching smaller accounts via price hikes while relying on the whales to keep the cash rolling in.
During an interview at Civo's Navigate shindig in Berlin, Boost questioned whether Broadcom could be regretting its decisions. "There's no one I've spoken to that is happy about the changes," he said. "The changes benefit [Broadcom], no matter how Broadcom spins it."
[2]
And naturally, Civo – alongside many other alternatives – is more than happy to offer an avenue of escape to former VMware loyalists left reeling by the changes implemented following the acquisition of the company by Broadcom.
[3]
[4]
During the VMware Explore conference, [5]attendees spoke of tripling prices and concerns over the transition from perpetual licenses to the potentially bigger bills of compulsory subscriptions.
Boost also discussed the financial distress the changes were causing for smaller companies that had built businesses on VMware. "Overnight, their prices have quadrupled or whatever, and they've got a choice: do they pass it on to their customers, or do they try and soak it up? They probably can't afford to soak it up, so they pass it on. It's a real mess. I think it's a shame that it's profits over anything else nowadays."
[6]
According to the research, 48.7 percent of customers are considering a change of cloud provider, and 44.9 percent are looking into migrating to open source solutions. However, 28.6 percent are worried about open source security, and 23.2 percent voiced concern about security and service level agreements (SLA).
[7]VMware revenue bounces for Broadcom, chips were a little undercooked
[8]AT&T sues Broadcom for 'breaking' VMware support extension contract
[9]Veeam debuts its Proxmox backup tool – and reveals outfit using it to quit VMware
[10]Public clouds are 'dirty' about VMware's on-prem push, says Broadcom CEO Hock Tan
Henry Godwin, VP of Global Sales at Civo, wrote in the research: "We've heard from a lot of concerned VMware customers over the previous nine months. Ultimately, businesses want certainty. They cannot continue in a situation where prices are skyrocketing without any parallel improvement in service."
Many rival cloud providers and vendors would be delighted to take on customers tired of being on the sharp, pointy end of Broadcom's changes. Companies including Nutanix have enjoyed a surge of interest at the expense of VMware.
Simon Hansford, formerly CEO at UKCloud and now working with Civo, told The Register that VMware's customer base could be roughly divided into thirds, those that Broadcom hoped would simply regard the hikes as a cost of doing business, a third that hoped they were small enough that VMware's new leadership wouldn't come after them, and a third that Hansford said were "just jumping ship."
The new research indicates that significantly more than a third might be leaping off the VMware platform before long, which is not good news for Broadcom, no matter how rosy the [11]financials might look right now.
[12]
The Register contacted Broadcom for comment, but the company has yet to respond. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/08/broadcom_vmware_civo/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZuG-oykchalPIihu11qnZwAAAUw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZuG-oykchalPIihu11qnZwAAAUw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZuG-oykchalPIihu11qnZwAAAUw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/29/vmware_explore_strategy_analysis/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZuG-oykchalPIihu11qnZwAAAUw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/06/broadcom_q3_2024/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/05/att_sues_broadcom_vmware_support/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/02/veeam_proxmox_support_arrives/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/29/hock_tan_vmware_private_cloud/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/06/broadcom_q3_2024/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZuG-oykchalPIihu11qnZwAAAUw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Consider Yourself
You are correct, however, I am currently consulting with a very large pan-European client who is actively looking at alternatives, given their VMware bills are coming in at something like 8-10x what they were.
This is much more than a maybe. There is nothing in VMware that excludes them from other offerings (they don't leverage any of their expensive components). Of course that may be trickier for some consumers of VMware.
Open source replacements not good enough ?
This is where a bit of enlightened cooperation can pay big dividends. If you are a large VMware user then club together with other large users and fund developers to add whatever you think is missing to open source VMware replacements. It might take a few months and some ££ but you then get what you want and save lots more ££ over years to come.
However it is psychologically hard for the large corporate C-suits to do this - they just see it as making payments when others, not in the paying club, get the results for free -- why should they do that ?
But that is how FLOSS works: some pay, some do not, all benefit.
Re: Open source replacements not good enough ?
It's a nice idea but we're stuck with a couple of problems.
C-suites like the idea of someone (i.e. a company) that they can shout out when things go wrong. They like the idea of guaranteed support levels and things like SLA's.
Time - time is really not on their side to do this. I can tell you from experience (see my comment above) that customers are looking and looking to do something fairly quickly.
Expense & complexity. It's likely that the features that I want, aren't necessarily the features that someone else wants or the ones they want and so on. Deciding what to prioritise comes at a cost in terms of financial and time and if someone feels they aren't getting the love they believe that they're paying for, then they're likely to walk away leaving others with higher bills. There's also the question of longevity - one of the selling points of virtualisation is the ability to run up virtual machines that may have been created on versions from many releases ago. Who's to say these FOSS offerings can provide that level of longevity?
Not saying it isn't a viable option if non of the above are show stopped, but for many, I think that they will be just that.
Re: Open source replacements not good enough ?
An easy way around this is just to adopt a new stack that is based on OSS tech even if it is "commercial". Proxmox is mentioned often, can pay them for their services, they appear to have a lot of open source stuff, and I assume they probably contribute upstream to projects. Same for Red Hat's Enterprise Virtualization, and I suspect HPE's latest hypervisor is similar. Maybe even Nutanix contributes upstream too for their AHV. (disclaimer I've never used any of these products)
"I think it's a shame that it's profits over anything else nowadays"
Welcome to the world of MBAs.
Consider Yourself
I never trust these "xx% of people asked said they were considering ..." type surveys. If you'd asked me any time during the 20 years I worked at my last full-time job whether I was considering leaving the answer would always have been "Yes". There's a gulf of difference between considering something and actually doing it.