Supermarket Giant Tesco Sues VMware, Warns Lack of Support Could Disrupt Food Supply (theregister.com)
(Wednesday September 03, 2025 @05:20PM (BeauHD)
from the groceries-on-the-line dept.)
- Reference: 0178996734
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/09/03/2018245/supermarket-giant-tesco-sues-vmware-warns-lack-of-support-could-disrupt-food-supply
- Source link: https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/03/tesco_sues_vmware_broadcom_computacenter/
Tesco is [1]suing Broadcom and reseller Computacenter for at least $134 million , claiming that VMware's perpetual license support agreements were breached after Broadcom's acquisition. The supermarket giant warned it "may not be able to put food on the shelves if the situation goes pear-shaped," writes The Register's Simon Sharwood. From the report:
> Court documents seen by The Register assert that in January 2021 Tesco acquired perpetual licenses for VMware's vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation products, plus subscriptions to Virtzilla's Tanzu products, and agreed a contract for support services and software upgrades that run until 2026. Tesco claims VMware also agreed to give it an option to extend support services for an additional four years. All of this happened before Broadcom acquired VMware and stopped selling support services for software sold under perpetual licenses. Broadcom does sell support to those who sign for its new software subscriptions.
>
> The supermarket giant says Broadcom's subscriptions mean it must pay "excessive and inflated prices for virtualization software for which Tesco has already paid," and "is unable any longer to purchase stand-alone Virtualization Support Services for its Perpetually Licensed Software without also having to purchase duplicative subscription-based licenses for those same Software products which it already owns." The complaint also alleges that Tesco's contracts with VMware include eligibility for software upgrades, but that Broadcom won't let the retailer update its perpetual licenses to cover the new Cloud Foundation 9.
>
> The filing names Computacenter as a co-defendant as it was the reseller that Tesco relied on for software licenses, and the retailer feels it's breached contracts to supply software at a fixed price. Tesco's filing also mentions Broadcom's patch publication policy, which means users who don't acquire subscriptions can't receive all security updates and don't receive other fixes. The retailer thinks its contracts mean it is entitled to those updates. The filing suggests that lack of support is not just a legal matter, but may have wider implications because VMware software, and support for it "are essential for the operations and resilience of Tesco's business and its ability to supply groceries to consumers across the UK and Republic of Ireland."
>
> "VMware Virtualization Software underpins the servers and data systems that enable Tesco's stores and operations to function, hosting approximately 40,000 server workloads and connecting to, by way of illustration, tills in Tesco stores," the filing states. Tesco's filing warns that Broadcom, VMware, and Computacenter are each liable for at least $134 million damages, plus interest, and that the longer the dispute persists the higher damages will climb.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/03/tesco_sues_vmware_broadcom_computacenter/
> Court documents seen by The Register assert that in January 2021 Tesco acquired perpetual licenses for VMware's vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation products, plus subscriptions to Virtzilla's Tanzu products, and agreed a contract for support services and software upgrades that run until 2026. Tesco claims VMware also agreed to give it an option to extend support services for an additional four years. All of this happened before Broadcom acquired VMware and stopped selling support services for software sold under perpetual licenses. Broadcom does sell support to those who sign for its new software subscriptions.
>
> The supermarket giant says Broadcom's subscriptions mean it must pay "excessive and inflated prices for virtualization software for which Tesco has already paid," and "is unable any longer to purchase stand-alone Virtualization Support Services for its Perpetually Licensed Software without also having to purchase duplicative subscription-based licenses for those same Software products which it already owns." The complaint also alleges that Tesco's contracts with VMware include eligibility for software upgrades, but that Broadcom won't let the retailer update its perpetual licenses to cover the new Cloud Foundation 9.
>
> The filing names Computacenter as a co-defendant as it was the reseller that Tesco relied on for software licenses, and the retailer feels it's breached contracts to supply software at a fixed price. Tesco's filing also mentions Broadcom's patch publication policy, which means users who don't acquire subscriptions can't receive all security updates and don't receive other fixes. The retailer thinks its contracts mean it is entitled to those updates. The filing suggests that lack of support is not just a legal matter, but may have wider implications because VMware software, and support for it "are essential for the operations and resilience of Tesco's business and its ability to supply groceries to consumers across the UK and Republic of Ireland."
>
> "VMware Virtualization Software underpins the servers and data systems that enable Tesco's stores and operations to function, hosting approximately 40,000 server workloads and connecting to, by way of illustration, tills in Tesco stores," the filing states. Tesco's filing warns that Broadcom, VMware, and Computacenter are each liable for at least $134 million damages, plus interest, and that the longer the dispute persists the higher damages will climb.
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/03/tesco_sues_vmware_broadcom_computacenter/
Just switch (Score:2)
by TheMiddleRoad ( 1153113 )
But also sue.
Re: (Score:2)
by hadleyburg ( 823868 )
> But also sue.
"Just"
"Warns Lack of Support Could Disrupt Food Supply" (Score:1)
by SeaFox ( 739806 )
If that much of the food supply is concentrated into the hands of a single corporation, that sounds like a monopoly that needs to be broken up in the name of national security.
Pear-shaped (Score:2)
by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
Very droll.
Locked in (Score:2, Flamebait)
> "are essential for the operations and resilience of Tesco's business and its ability to supply groceries to consumers across the UK and Republic of Ireland."
So in other words Tesco was negligent in getting core aspects of their business dependent on a single supplier.
Re: (Score:2)
> So in other words Tesco was negligent in getting core aspects of their business dependent on a single supplier.
... only because it was agreed they'd have perpetual licenses and options for continued support, which is now denied:
> in January 2021 Tesco acquired perpetual licenses for VMware's vSphere Foundation and Cloud Foundation products, plus subscriptions to Virtzilla's Tanzu products, and agreed a contract for support services and software upgrades that run until 2026. Tesco claims VMware also agreed to give it an option to extend support services for an additional four years.
Someone's in breach of contract, and
Re: (Score:2)
He's not claiming Tesco is in breach of contract. He's claiming that they acted unwisely in making their core business dependent on one particular (any particular) supplier. He's clearly right, but "efficiency experts" have been pushing more and more companies in that direction for decades.
Re: (Score:2)
A pretty significant proportion of the world's IT infrastructure runs on single source products; from Microsoft to Broadcom to Oracle. Believe me, I'm trying to move our office over to open source where I can, but it's no mean feat.
The real lesson, unless the courts start holding licensors accountable, is that a perpetual license may actually be meaningless, no matter what you paid for it.