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Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct

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Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct

#181

Post by hinata08 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #101
fsuts wrote: post #23

”Tesco, a retail conglomerate headquartered in the United Kingdom” For any non Uk people, it’s the largest supermarket in Uk. Combination of large stores and smaller high street convenience stores. (2nd largest was owned by Walmart who sold it recently to private equity and so now it’s saddled with debt and being ruined…).

And it has no US comparison. The tesco meal deal concept, the literal wall of choices, just doesnt exist in north america. I did a big work trip to the UK a couple years back with over 100 people. I tried to explain meal deals and nobody believed me. Then our people basically stripped the meal deal shelves of the tesco express beside our hotel.

Garment section is also amazing, british ppl are so classy while having timeless thick pieces

I ended up flying back home with some oxford shirt from the Tesco, and it's really cool (vneck pull over - tie - shirt sets were sold out with my size unfortunately)

Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct

#183

Post by stuaxo »

rwmj wrote: post #86
lmm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart had already ruined ASDA to be fair, it's not like private equity is doing worse.

The fifth largest (Morrisons) was also sold to PE with predictable results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morrisons#CD&R_takeover

We need a private equity tracker so we can get alerts on these and track the debt loading and looting.

Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct

#184

Post by Annatar »

ddeck wrote: post #156
asdff wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia's ownership section on broadcom is stale 2024 data but back then at least 10 investment firms and banks owned about 40% of it.

Broadcom is publicly listed with a public float of about 98% (i.e. 98% of it's shares are listed publicly). You're right that most shares are held by institutions (~80%), but that typically reflects the fact that most share ownership by individuals/companies goes through intermediaries (401k, fund investments, ETF etc.). Most of this institutional ownership is just asset managers, insurance, banks etc. taking their c…

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Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct

#185

Post by Annatar »

fsuts wrote: post #23

”Tesco, a retail conglomerate headquartered in the United Kingdom” For any non Uk people, it’s the largest supermarket in Uk. Combination of large stores and smaller high street convenience stores. (2nd largest was owned by Walmart who sold it recently to private equity and so now it’s saddled with debt and being ruined…).

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Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct

#186

Post by mrweasel »

fragmede wrote: post #138
whatever1 wrote: post #133

Why a retailer needs 40k servers? What are they serving? To whom? What is wrong with system designers these days? Are they designing or just selling?

How do you imagine cash registers work these days? With 5,000 stores worldwide, 40k servers is 8 computers per store, which doesn't seem excessive to me.

5000 stores, let's say 10 checkout lines per store, just to overprovision, so at worst 50000 simultaneous transactions going on, but probably way less. You can do that with a single server, but you'd want some redundancy and spare capacity.

I worked with a Danish retailer with +3000 store in ~50 countries, and even adding their webshop on top and they were closer to 200 (maybe 300) servers (most VMs). Then you need the ActiveDirectory, office IT, all that stuff, with redundancy and it adds up quickly... but not to 40K.

What I will say that people forget is that production might be 8 beefy VMs, you still need to replicate that to a number of test systems, staging environments and so on. So a 8 node production cluster because maybe 24 servers when accounting those other environments.

Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct

#187

Post by roryirvine »

alexjurkiewicz wrote: post #112
sqircles wrote: post #99

I worked in software acquisitions for a large organization and it was really eye opening to see how insane some of these companies are when it comes to pricing customers out. I always wondered - what is the motive? They make pricing structure changes that aren't even considerable for any organization that has any fashion of a budget. VMWare was one example where our already insane costs that had nearly tripled over t…

It might take a large org several years to migrate off core systems like VMWare. If you think the customer is likely to churn within a few years anyway it makes economic sense to hike their fee.

At any one time, something like 90% of all enterprises are engaged in at least one multi-year strategic move away from an abusive vendor. In the tech world, these might be Oracle, Broadcom, (formerly) IBM, or (even more formerly) Computer Associates.

Typically you're looking at a year or two of discovery, audits and planning, another year or two to cover the main transition, and then up to five years of mopping up.

There are other near-ubiquitous vendors (eg. Microsoft and Cisco) who manage to be tolerated as annoying rather than outright abusive. I guess they take a slightly different view of how hard to squeeze their customers.

Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct

#188

Post by postexitus »

whatever1 wrote: post #133

Why a retailer needs 40k servers? What are they serving? To whom? What is wrong with system designers these days? Are they designing or just selling?

If you can't imagine the scale of a retailer's etnerprise architecture, maybe it's a you problem?

Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct

#189

Post by 2b3a51 »

rwmj wrote: post #58
twoodfin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Broadcom correctly realizes that no matter what they do there is no long term: In a world of Cloud hyperscalers and containerization, the absolute number of “traditional” virtual machines run by a commercial hypervisor has nowhere to go but down.

No one's going away from VMs any time soon (if ever). More than half of the workloads we see being migrated are Windows. Many more are odd/ancient RHEL versions running some very specific software where the manufacturer won't offer a newer version / went out of business / the guy who set it up left and no one knows how it's configured / it works and we never want to touch it again.

Best of luck. Without revealing any commercially sensitive information it would be fun to know what the age of the oldest VM running is. Windows 2K? RHEL 4?

(As an end-user sort of person, I get a strong smell of Bladerunner from this kind of thing, where you can see old PCs in the background on top of decks with cables running out of them).

Re: Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct

#190

Post by cjrp »

nasretdinov wrote: post #173
cryo32 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What people don't realise is the startups here in the UK run on miserable sandwiches, tasteless crisps and energy drinks. Middle management lives on slightly more expensive platters from Pret.

Local food markets offer much better options than Pret to be fair

True, but it avoids any unknowns when the office manager is organising a senior leadership lunch meeting. "Nobody ever got fired for buying Pret".
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