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Comment by josephh | Hacker News Reader

Does this also impact server manufacturer customized images?

Broadcom terminated all OEM relationships already at the beginning of the year.

Ive been trying to understand the motivations theyve had for killing off so many products. I cant wrap my head around it. They bought VmWare and then shit on 85% of its paying customers and profit drivers (OEM) claiming profit driven cuts, but i dont get how they see the end of that play? And now they are backhanding anyone who has uses for ESXi free.. to what end?

Like what is the long term goal? And what does that look like at the end? Are they going to try and turn VmWare into a cloud only platform the likes of aws/gcp? Thats the only final destination i can think of that even remotely makes sense given the product chopping block

VMware clearly doesn't want any new customers and I suspect they haven't had any for years anyway. The plan is to move existing customers to subscription bundles (I don't see how that's different from a perpetual license plus support contract but whatever). The products aren't changing that much but some customers will have to buy a larger bundle to get the features they want. I assume the OEM licensing will come back just with different pricing.

They bought the patents, i imagine. The rest is just a bonus.

As it was explained to me, there's enough cream in taking the top 10% of customers direct, that ruining all their other relationships is worth it.

At least in the short term. Because if you are a VMWare partner who just had your biggest customer taken away from you to go Broadcom direct, you are probably now a HyperV, ProxMox or X Cloud shop, looking to lure your big whale back.

We started pushing people away from VMWare when the Broadcom acquisition hit and its been constantly reinforced as a great idea.

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