Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

41–48 of 48 posts

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

#42

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.

And none of the quotes from that Pickering guy actually made any sense

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

#43

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.

>The organization is saving “north of 85 percent” in licensing fees compared to when it relied on VMware, the executive said.

Nothing we can't google.

VMWare VCF is, let's say, $350/CPU core.

MVE is $600/socket, so at 32 cores, that's $18.75/core. At 64 cores, $9.38.

An 85% reduction in licensing/support fees is plausible.

100% was already possible, just not with 24/7 support.

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

#44
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broadcom has absolutely zero interest in the long-term future of VMware. Their only goal is to squeeze as much money out of it as possible before it goes bust. Let's say that VMware had a $10B revenue with a $9B operating cost. If 0.1% of their megacorp customers is responsible for 20% of that revenue while only being 1% of the support needs, then ditching the other 99.9% of customers reduces revenue to $2B while the…

Unlike Hock Tan, you forgot to raise the prices 5-10x. Then your 0.1% of customers generating 20% of your revenue turn into 0.1% of your customers generating the same amount of revenue as 100% of customers were before with lower operating costs and thus higher margins.

I did not, that's the "you can squeeze them for a couple of years" part.

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

#45
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…

Physical operations is the “you had one job” of running a stadium. Gillette even has their own wastewater plant. Some basic rack and stack for IT infra that they could offsite next to all the IT infra they can’t offsite should be child play to them.

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

#46
post #12

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.

Oracle would like a word.

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

#47

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."

Curious what Tesco was going to go to, considering most of the old Retalix/NCR WinPOS/ISS45 stack was heavily Windows-reliant underneath it.

I assume Azure or Hyper-V of some sort?

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

#48
post #12

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 sure that it’s addiction, it’s just not feasible for most large organizations to pivot from a core solution like VMware without years involved. Every company I know of is formulating an exit plan away from VMware. They just have to do it in a way that offers the least amount of risk and in stages.
Post reply on HN