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VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

arstechnica.com

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Re: VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

#31

Post by pjc50 »

unethical_ban wrote: post #2

There is a 100% chance that someone in Broadcom exec team is making money shorting themselves. Or else some insider assurance that they'd get so much money from government or some big customer that they could run their products into the ground no matter what. But enterprises are not as locked in as people think.

Note that execs are usually given stock grants in part to ensure they are long rather than short.

But you'd not be making money shorting Broadcom (AVGO); they're up on the year and YTD. They're an "AI stock" now, doing custom silicon for AI companies, and that's all that matters.

VMware is just going to be squeezed, rather than trying to acquire new customers. The entire corporate market is almost a rounding error compared to how big the datacenter boom is.

Re: VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

#33

Post by msh »

datakan wrote: post #12
unethical_ban wrote: post #2

There is a 100% chance that someone in Broadcom exec team is making money shorting themselves. Or else some insider assurance that they'd get so much money from government or some big customer that they could run their products into the ground no matter what. But enterprises are not as locked in as people think.

I didn't realize how addicted some orgs were to VMWare until Broadcom bought them and I witnessed zero people migrate to alternatives. It's been one of the single biggest shocks to me in my career. Watching them get squeezed openly and ruthlessly and just accepting it. I've only ever seen Microsoft pull that off before.

My workplace have had ibm support contracts from before Steve Jobs met Woz…

Re: VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

#34

Post by _joel »

WokeUp420 wrote: post #21
celsoazevedo wrote: post #19

Tesco, a large supermarket chain (also in the UK), is also moving away from VMware: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/06/tesco... I'm assuming they're paying much more than a football club. There's also a legal side in this case because they're actually suing Broadcom: "Tesco claimed Broadcom hiked its VMware prices by about 175 percent in UK court filings."

Kroger has moved to SUSE and Azure Local

"# Kroger, they put plastic, in your steaks" Ordinary Sausage

Re: VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

#35

Post by blincoln »

datakan wrote: post #12
unethical_ban wrote: post #2

There is a 100% chance that someone in Broadcom exec team is making money shorting themselves. Or else some insider assurance that they'd get so much money from government or some big customer that they could run their products into the ground no matter what. But enterprises are not as locked in as people think.

I didn't realize how addicted some orgs were to VMWare until Broadcom bought them and I witnessed zero people migrate to alternatives. It's been one of the single biggest shocks to me in my career. Watching them get squeezed openly and ruthlessly and just accepting it. I've only ever seen Microsoft pull that off before.

I'm not surprised that there's a lot of inertia.

VMware Workstation has historically been the most "it just works" option if one needed solid USB passthrough support. I've bought my own license for about 15 years because of that. Obviously I won't be doing that anymore because I refuse to subscribe instead of buying a permanent license.

I've been out of the infrastructure engineering space for a long time, but when that was still my career, vSphere was extremely reliable and easy to manage. When I've poked my head back in during pen tests since then, it's seemed like that was still the case.

Feels like Broadcom wants to use the Microsoft/Oracle/Cisco business model. They'll probably get away with it (at least for awhile) in the enterprise space, but they seem to have reached the same conclusion as me - Workstation and Fusion don't have enough exclusive aspects to be make the consumer market worth pursuing.

Re: VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

#36

Post by dist-epoch »

blincoln wrote: post #35
datakan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize how addicted some orgs were to VMWare until Broadcom bought them and I witnessed zero people migrate to alternatives. It's been one of the single biggest shocks to me in my career. Watching them get squeezed openly and ruthlessly and just accepting it. I've only ever seen Microsoft pull that off before.

I'm not surprised that there's a lot of inertia. VMware Workstation has historically been the most "it just works" option if one needed solid USB passthrough support. I've bought my own license for about 15 years because of that. Obviously I won't be doing that anymore because I refuse to subscribe instead of buying a permanent license. I've been out of the infrastructure engineering space for a long time, but when t…

VMware Workstation has been free for about 2 years now.

https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2024/11/11/vmware-...

Re: VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

#37

Post by toast0 »

Symbiote wrote: post #25
bob1029 wrote: post #14

> The soccer organization confirmed this week to The Register that it has moved its stadium’s server, storage, and networking infrastructure to HPE solutions delivered through HPE’s hybrid cloud management platform, GreenLake. This is just a much worse version of AWS. Obsession with maintaining some degree of physical control over infrastructure drives many organizations to absolute insanity. Skip the hybrid nonsense…

> Tottenham Hotspur Stadium has 20,000 network access points, 1,849 IPTV screens, and 519 CCTV screens. It hosts about 63,000 viewers A decent part of that is probably important to be working on the day of a football match. They already own a suitable building, probably with decent backup power, so running their own servers seems both more reliable and cheaper than renting.

> A decent part of that is probably important to be working on the day of a football match.

Otoh, if they only need the servers to run while guests are attending matches (and other events), it looks like they do about one event a week from their calendar [1]. Why pay to have the server 24/7 if you only use it for maybe 6 hours a week.

With that kind of utilization, cloud may well be cheaper.

Reliability you can argue either way. Onsite has the benefit that there's no external network causing problems; however for a site like that, you're likely to have redundant high capacity internet providers so that's less of an issue. Certainly, when there are server issues, having them onsite provides more agency, but I don't think that means it's more reliable.

[1] https://www.tottenhamhotspurstadium.com/events

Re: VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

#38

Post by geodel »

deadbunny wrote: post #20
bob1029 wrote: post #14

> The soccer organization confirmed this week to The Register that it has moved its stadium’s server, storage, and networking infrastructure to HPE solutions delivered through HPE’s hybrid cloud management platform, GreenLake. This is just a much worse version of AWS. Obsession with maintaining some degree of physical control over infrastructure drives many organizations to absolute insanity. Skip the hybrid nonsense…

Takes real balls to go with AWS huh?

I mean wasn't it just few months back when Socrates was asked to drink poison chalice when he was promoting multi-cloud strategy by using Kubernetes based deployment for his education platform.

Re: VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

#39

Post by Brian_K_White »

happymellon wrote: post #4

So I know that its VMWare, so the fees will be eyewatering, but 85% reduction is really meaningless in this story. How much was Tottenham using? Did the 85% actually cover the cost of their new CTO coming in and switching platforms? It's very vague.

To me it doesn't matter if it costs more or less to migrate. It's worth infinity to walk away from anyone who abuses you.

It's also worth infinity to switch from anything proprietary to open source. The claimed advantages of whatever proprietary product never really exist. You always get more value by paying developers instead of paying rent.

...And tolerating license audits. It boggles my mind that people are willing to tolerate some douchebags from MS or anyone else to come in to your office and turn over every rock and look through all your books, and you PAY them for this!

Re: VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent

#40

Post by happymellon »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #39
happymellon wrote: post #4

So I know that its VMWare, so the fees will be eyewatering, but 85% reduction is really meaningless in this story. How much was Tottenham using? Did the 85% actually cover the cost of their new CTO coming in and switching platforms? It's very vague.

To me it doesn't matter if it costs more or less to migrate. It's worth infinity to walk away from anyone who abuses you. It's also worth infinity to switch from anything proprietary to open source. The claimed advantages of whatever proprietary product never really exist. You always get more value by paying developers instead of paying rent. ...And tolerating license audits. It boggles my mind that people are willin…

I would agree. But that was not the story.
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