Since Broadcom’s $61 billion acquisition of VMware closed in November 2023, Broadcom has been charging ahead with major changes to the company’s personnel and products. In December, Broadcom began laying off thousands of employees and stopped selling perpetually licensed versions of VMware products, pushing its customers toward more stable and lucrative software subscriptions instead. In January, it ended its partner programs, potentially disrupting sales and service for many users of its products.
This week, Broadcom is making a change that is smaller in scale but possibly more relevant for home users of its products: The free version of VMware’s vSphere Hypervisor, also known as ESXi, is being discontinued.
I know internally Broadcom is screwing over VMware employees with new contracts. I’ve heard of staff pushing back three times so far to get contracts changed.
They also poached all of the biggest customers from a bunch of their resellers, from what I hear. I’m guessing the reseller market is pretty dead.
This is exactly what happened.