Featured in this episode of Tech News of the Week
Now that Broadcom has officially completed the acquisition of VMware, one of their first actions is to get rid of that pesky perpetual licensing model. Many tech vendors have transitioned over to a subscription based model for their licensing over the past decade.
It’s fun! And also neat! I love not owning anything and renting all of it. Depreciation is stupid! That’s what I told my accountant as I punted him out the front door. OpEx 4 LIFE.
Customers who have existing perpetual licenses with an active support contract can continue on for now, but once the SnS contract is up, Broadcom will come calling for those sweet, sweet subscription dollars. Among the products impacted are VMware Cloud Foundation, vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and pretty much everything else.
In addition to these licensing changes, Broadcom has also laid off at least 2,800 people and announced it is selling off the Carbon Black and EUC portions of the company. This is clearly a move for Broadcom to divest itself of its whiniest customers as well, while keeping the big fish on the line and reeling in the dough. Oooh, I made a fishing analogy, how delightful.
There’s certainly an opportunity for alternative solutions to take advantage of Broadcom’s moves- looking at you Nutanix. We’ll see if they can make hay now that Broadcom has handed them a fork. More metaphors! It’s why you keep coming back right?