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Comment by InsomniacL | Hacker News Reader

So many people misunderstand what is actually happening.

Broadcom aren't hiking the price 10x for everyone.

If you previously used:

  - VMWare Vsphere

  - Cloudify Automation 

  - CISCO ASI Software Defined Network

  - Splunk log collection

  - Nutanix Acropolis Distributed Storage

  - etc..

Then you're going to see you vSphere costs jump massively because you're only option to buy vSphere now also comes with:

  - VMWare Vsphere

  - VMWare Aria Automation

  - VMWare NSX Software Defined Network

  - VMWare Log Insight

  - VMWare vSan

  - etc..

So, if you're already heavily invested in VMWare, you might even see your costs reduce.

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From Broadcom's perspective, that seems to make even less sense than a simple price hike that lets them shed unprofitable customers. What's the point of doing that? Some kind of sales force optimization?

> What's the point of doing that

A sale isn't free. It requires time, headcount, and engineering+PM resources.

At Broadcom size, you want to maximize sales to F1000 customers (the kind that can and will shell 7-8 figures in TCV) as that gives you the most bang for your buck from a SalesOps perspective.

A major issue with VMWare was their sales team would chase logos at the expense of an optimal sale, so their account teams would give extreme discounts (70-80%) at barely above the margin in order to close deals.

Well, we're probably a F10 company and my project had to move off of our vmware environment because prices were too high. Even at enormous companies, these things matter, and there's still accounting for resources at the local level.

Everyone now has to ask the question, should i continue paying for product that does XYZ from VMWare's competitor when i'm already getting a product that does XYZ as part of the VMWare licence.

Chances are if you're a vmware estate, those products are going to integrate better and then you only have a supplier, support portal, customer rep, etc..

Broadcom loose customers who arn't really invested in to VMWare and those who stay become even more invested in to them.

>those who stay become even more invested in to them

Maybe. Or maybe they understand the play being made as well as everyone else does, and won't be inclined to become any more dependent on an organization that will turn the screws nice and hard on anyone they know won't be able to leave them.

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