Featured in this episode of Tech News of the Week
The EU commission overseeing the intended acquisition of VMware by Broadcom has given the green light. The $61B acquisition appears to be lumbering forward after the EU commission extracted promises from Broadcom that it wouldn’t use its newfound leverage to stymie competition in the marketplace.
At least not overtly.
The primary concern and concession was over the red-hot market that is fiber channel HBAs. Now I know you’re thinking, “Wait, didn’t we ditch fiber-channel like a decade ago for iSCSI and HCI?” Apparently not, and since Marvell is the only serious competitor to Broadcom’s near monopoly on FC HBAs, the EU won a promise from Broadcom that they would continue to supply the code for certifying fiber-channel host bus adapters with VMware’s API to interested parties like Marvell for the foreseeable future.
The stagnant FC market is hardly an area of concern to Broadcom, so I’m sure they’re breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn’t something more contentious. Now they just need to get the all clear from the UK and US investigations to finally seal the deal.