VMware is now part of Broadcom

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Broadcom’s $69B acquisition of VMware is widely seen as the start of aggressive price hikes, tighter licensing and product rationalization, with many enterprises, universities and MSPs expecting higher costs, reduced support and eventual “milk it dry” treatment of the VMware stack. Commenters debate migration paths away from vSphere/ESXi—ranging from Proxmox, XCP‑NG and OpenStack to public cloud—while noting that replacing VMware’s rich management and ecosystem is complex and multi‑year work. Others worry about the future of VMware-owned open‑source projects like Spring and RabbitMQ, and the broader impact on on‑prem virtualization strategies.

Perception of Broadcom’s Strategy

  • Many see Broadcom as a “software private equity” player: buy entrenched vendors, cut costs, raise prices, milk maintenance until the last customer leaves.
  • Comparisons are made to CA, Oracle, EMC, Cisco, and other acquirers seen as turning products into high-margin “abandonware.”
  • Several commenters say this is likely VMware’s final corporate home: Broadcom will extract value rather than groom it for resale.

Licensing, Pricing, and Customer Impact

  • Academic discounts are reportedly being dropped; some universities expect 2–3× price increases and are actively evaluating alternatives.
  • Some regions (e.g., New Zealand) are seeing Broadcom pull back, with short “consultation” periods preceding layoffs.
  • Expectations of significant license and maintenance hikes across the board; some mention added telemetry/usage tracking.

VMware’s Technical Position

  • Despite criticism of licensing, VMware ESXi/vSphere is widely viewed as extremely stable, feature-rich, and deeply entrenched in datacenters.
  • Key differentiators cited: vCenter ecosystem (vMotion, Storage vMotion, HA, fault tolerance, vSAN, NSX, Horizon, automation tools), large-scale management, and strong reliability compared to Hyper‑V and many open-source stacks.
  • Desktop products (Workstation/Fusion) are seen as superior to VirtualBox in performance, polish, and device support, but not core to VMware’s business.

Migration Challenges and Alternatives

  • Lock‑in is mostly in the management and ecosystem, not the hypervisor alone; moving off VMware is seen as multi‑year, high‑effort work.
  • Alternatives discussed: Proxmox, XCP‑NG/XenServer, KVM/libvirt, OpenStack, Hyper‑V, OpenNebula, SmartOS/Triton, Oxide, and Red Hat’s OpenShift Virtualization.
  • Proxmox and XCP‑NG are widely praised for smaller and mid‑size deployments; concerns remain about scale, tooling, and certain workloads (e.g., heavy SQL/Exchange on KVM).
  • Some organizations have already started or completed migrations (e.g., to XCP‑NG, Proxmox, or cloud).

Security and Reliability Notes

  • vCenter is seen as a major attack surface; recent ransomware waves increased scrutiny of VMware patching and hardening.
  • Some report smooth patching; others recall updates that broke hardware support, raising fear of “bricked” servers.

Ecosystem & Open Source Concerns

  • Worries about the future of Spring, Spring Boot, RabbitMQ, and other VMware‑stewarded open source under Broadcom’s ownership.
  • Some users plan to pause or reconsider adoption of VMware‑linked OSS until Broadcom’s strategy becomes clearer.

On‑Prem vs Cloud & Careers

  • Many expect the acquisition and price hikes to accelerate moves to public cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP) or container platforms.
  • Concern that ESXi specialists and on‑prem virtualization roles may shrink as organizations freeze new VMware investment and shift strategy.