For anyone who doesn't know, VMware has doubled down in open source in the past 3 years, especially Kubernetes. I don't think Broadcom really understands how investment in open source works or for that matter cares.<p>Half of my org of ~500 engineers works on upstream projects.<p>Disclaimer: Current employee of VMware
Michael Dell will get $24bn! from this acquisition...It's fascinating how he turned around a struggling PC company (Dell Inc) into a financial engineering machine that made him tens of billions.<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2021/04/18/how-wall-streets-greatest-piece-of-financial-engineering-propelled-michael-dell-to-a-50-billion-fortune/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2021/04/18/how-wall...</a>
Oh no <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/uxucz4/if_vmware_is_acquired_by_broadcom_run_and_do_not/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/uxucz4/if_vm...</a>
For anyone curious about potential open-source migration options given the prospect of uncertainty around VMware pricing and support:<p>- xcp-ng[1] is a support-available fork of XenServer. Migration[2] can be performed using export to OVA format and subsequent import into the built-in Xen-Orchestra interface.<p>- proxmox-ve[3] provides a management UI for Linux Virtual Machine (LVM) and Linux Containers (LXC) hosts and provides various vendor migration guides[4]. Both commercial and community support[5] is available.<p>- The Xen Hypervisor[6] is capable of hosting x86 and ARM virtual hosts, and their project provides a VMware migration guide[7]<p>[1] - <a href="https://xcp-ng.com/" rel="nofollow">https://xcp-ng.com/</a><p>[2] - <a href="https://xcp-ng.org/docs/migratetoxcpng.html#from-vmware" rel="nofollow">https://xcp-ng.org/docs/migratetoxcpng.html#from-vmware</a><p>[3] - <a href="https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-ve" rel="nofollow">https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-ve</a><p>[4] - <a href="https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migration_of_servers_to_Proxmox_VE#Virtual-to-Virtual_.28V2V.29" rel="nofollow">https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migration_of_servers_to_Proxmox...</a><p>[5] - <a href="https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-ve/support" rel="nofollow">https://www.proxmox.com/en/proxmox-ve/support</a><p>[6] - <a href="https://xenproject.org/developers/teams/xen-hypervisor/" rel="nofollow">https://xenproject.org/developers/teams/xen-hypervisor/</a><p>[7] - <a href="https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Migration_from_VMware" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.xenproject.org/wiki/Migration_from_VMware</a>
Ponders if it will payoff as an investment. Hyper visors are nowdays commodity.
Workloads are moving from enterprise onsite datacenters to the cloud. Hyperscalers AWS,Google and Azure running the cloud are running work loads on Linux KVM kernel based virtual machines.
It's so sad to see good integrated tech products being bought out just so the market can squeeze it and its customers dry of money, leaving nothing but a dry soulless husk of finance-driven leadership squeezing blood from desperate vendor-locked customers, just so swarms of consultants can move everyone that can afford them off onto the next integrated product to rinse and repeat.<p>The current solution to business management feels suboptimal. If companies are like persons maybe they should be organized with a more integrated 'body', where the 'head' doesn't have total power to sell out the rest of the integrated parts for its own gain. Co-op like organizational structures might avoid this issue, for example.
So far I have only used Automic Automation from Broadcom. I found it supremely crappy. Its UI brings back memory of (I guess now defunct) IBM Websphere. But it is now an "Enterprise Solution" so it has to shoved down developer's throat with full force.<p>Just like analysts said IBM brought RedHat mainly for Openshift platform and I think there is some truth to it. Seems Broadcom has brought VMWare for their Tanzu platform which is direct competitor of Openshift. It is less about virtualization in corporate data centers which many agree here is legacy business at this point.
I have a very different view on this purchase, and I f my thesis is right, then it just might be the best move ever ( Michael Dell has certainly won again with this deal.) Here is my vie, VMware has become the OS of the private cloud. Sure Linux based, but from an enterprise perspective, VMWAre is closer to the HW than any other OS. Considering that Broadcom is a HW company, and that they are looking to fend off Qualcomm, Amd, and Intel as key competitors, should they move to build ARM or RISK-V based server for the enterprise, they could be at a mejor advantage on those CPU architecture. Just a thought from over the pond, but they could buy Ampere and be in that market very well positioned to take in the Enterprise space end to end, they would only need storage if you don’t consider VSAN as a valid solution in that space. Tim will tell.
"to speed up its expansion into the enterprise software business."<p>Why does a chipmaker want/need to expand into enterprise software? Shouldn't they be expanding to making different chips?
I don't understand the stock market. VMW at $50B market cap equates to ~$120 per share. The Broadcom acquisition is for ~20% more, and yet, the stock price is at $120, not... $145 or something.<p>Can someone more financially literate (or with direct experience in the stock market) explain this discrepancy to me?<p>(comment made at ~9:33am ET, stock market opened a few minutes ago)
Probably an insignificant detail when considering the entire portfolio of subsidiaries and services under VMWare, but I guess there are some pretty notable projects included in this acquisition.<p>Especially from the Pivotal portfolio such as RabbitMQ, GreenPlum, Spring, Hibernate, etc... although I'm sure most here couldn't care less about Spring related projects.
Not sure I understand the expected synergies here. Broadcom's main business is making embedded chips for networking and storage devices. Is this just a pure diversification play?
Can anyone explain how VMware's stock jumped from $90 to $120 on May 23rd before this was announced? How did people know this was going to happen 3 days before anyone of us heard of it?
It is unlikely but if Broadcom boots out SpringBoot and associated crapola from their portfolio, it could be a win for decent developers in this otherwise bad acquisition.
I think this is actually great news. After acquisition the conglomerate level scale will slow innovation. Freeing up opportunity for talented folks to start companies in the space in the areas that are being underserved by Goliath. In addition, these types of deals prove liquidity to financiers creating precedent for financing young upstarts.
I was hoping an independent VMware might recapture some of what it lost during the Dell years, but they still produce a solid product that I generally enjoy working with. Not sure if Broadcom is going to make the situation much better though.
This deal sounds like it is great for C-suites and investors. I don't know if it's great for the employees. My guess is that there will be a lot of cost cutting moves soon.
One thing I've noticed is that M&A activity really picks up just before a downturn.<p>It's just a gut feeling, I have no data to back it up.
Enterprise software is such a mystery to me. I can't imagine any company ran by <40 yr olds ever paying $100k+ a year to VMWare, Symantec, Oracle, ...<p>To me it just looks like older companies paying to keep from having to deal with Linux directly