A number of major VMware business model changes following its acquisition by Broadcom in November 2023 have left the virtualization giant grappling with widespread customer dissatisfaction.
The company’s VP for Cloud Platform, Infrastructure and Solutions Marketing, Prashanth Shenoy, is now looking to pacify disgruntled customers, emphasizing the positive aspects of the changes in a blog post on the company’s website.
Shenoy, who entered the role in August 2022 after more than 22 years at Cisco, noted VMware "has been all about change" since its acquisiton, resulting in "many questions and concerns" as customers, "evaluate how to maximize value from" its products.
VMware customers aren’t happy about Broadcom
One of the key areas Shenoy addresses in his blog post is Broadcom’s decision to terminate long-standing perpetual licenses, replacing them with a subscription-based model that could surface some budget concerns among customers.
In an effort to justify the company’s decision, he stated that “all major enterprise software providers” used similar subscriptions today, highlighting the flexibility that monthly renewals provide.
He also added that the slimming of VMware’s portfolio would result in greater value for higher-end products, while merging teams would create a more streamlined and efficient platform. Shenoy summarized: “Three changes, but massive impact.”
Several major announcements have been made in the weeks that followed Broadcom’s $61 billion takeover of VMware, including its most recent decision to pull the free version of the ESXi hypervisor.
Defending the sizeable shifts, Shenoy concluded that any changes would ultimately result in benefits to customers and partners, such as adding more value. But in the short-term, at least, VMware looks to face a major challenge of retaining customers, let along attracting new ones, as the market becomes flooded with individuals and teams that have become unsatisfied with the new Broadcom-led VMware.
Via Ars Technica
More from TechRadar Pro
- Check out the best small business servers
- Dell is terminating its distribution deal with VMware
- We’ve made a list of the best cloud hosting providers
