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Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

reuters.com

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Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#271

Post by parasubvert »

yobbo wrote: post #209
hnarn wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have direct experience with administrating Oracle, but my impression is that they make a lot of money from the moats they’ve built: but they would never have been able to build them if the product was garbage to begin with. Sure, nobody would probably pick Oracle today for a new project almost regardless of size, but surely there must have been a point in time when Oracle was simply superior when it came to s…

> because you can’t build a business on scamming people in the long run. When switching is effectively impossible, this is what happens. Oracle has been buying various application companies with installed bases that are difficult to migrate away from. They are essentially buying customers to milk after putting in their enclosed pasture.

Switching isn't impossible, there are plenty of companies that help you get off Oracle. It's just that it's risky and time consuming, requires specialized knowledge, and companies would rather pay up than deal with all of those things. But this goes for almost any complex product on the planet. Switching costs are high,

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#272

Post by pkulak »

stormbrew wrote: post #268
influx wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run esxi on my (admittedly beefy), home server. It is a fantastic piece of software that can be completely controlled through a web browser. I can easily spin up a couple of VMs, interact with the install without having to use a remote virtual keyboard/video switch, and the whole thing is rock solid. I could probably do a lot of the same thing with Linux itself, but the web interface is so nice, I'm keeping it as l…

I’d be really interested in an “i used both” comparison between esxi’s free offering and proxmox for this sort of purpose. I imagine esxi might be more polished, but also more limited.

I use Proxmox and can do everything OP just described. I would assume the esxi is more polished, but I don't spend a heck of a lot of time on my hypervisor; mostly on what it's hypervising.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#273

Post by donalhunt »

scarface74 wrote: post #233
rosege wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but there was a big shift away from virtualization to cloud and micro services. As a former VMware admin I'm surprised VMware is doing as well as they are now. But maybe my view is just shaded by the bank I was working for that was moving away from it to AWS.

There isn’t really a big shift to cloud yet. Only 5% of all IT spend is on any cloud provider according to the CEO of Amazon and former CEO of AWS [1] https://accelerationeconomy.com/cloud/amazon-shocker-ceo-jas... [1] Andy Jassy is my skip^9 manager.

Yep. This has been the sentiment shared by Google Cloud execs a lot too. All the players are looking at the 10-20 year picture with regard market share / spend (in an industry where no-one knows what compute infrastructure will look like by the middle of that period).

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#274

Post by nyx »

stormbrew wrote: post #268
influx wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I run esxi on my (admittedly beefy), home server. It is a fantastic piece of software that can be completely controlled through a web browser. I can easily spin up a couple of VMs, interact with the install without having to use a remote virtual keyboard/video switch, and the whole thing is rock solid. I could probably do a lot of the same thing with Linux itself, but the web interface is so nice, I'm keeping it as l…

I’d be really interested in an “i used both” comparison between esxi’s free offering and proxmox for this sort of purpose. I imagine esxi might be more polished, but also more limited.

I've used both, though not for anything especially complicated. Your guess about the polish level is correct; ESXi blows Proxmox out of the water interface-wise, especially for some specific tasks like configuring networks or managing PCI passthrough devices. As far as "more limited" goes, I can't say I noticed much of a feature discrepancy, although being open and just sitting atop KVM, Proxmox doesn't have any of the artificial limitations imposed by VMware (like a cap on number of vCPUs in the free version, eugh).

One pretty big one, if you're looking at homelab use, is that Proxmox is just Debian, so it's waaaay more likely to run on crap-tier commodity hardware, whereas VMware has all the usual enterprise-level support commitments and so you're very much on your own if you try to force it to run on hardware that isn't on their official compatibility list.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#275

Post by parasubvert »

colechristensen wrote: post #222
vkat wrote: post #196

For anyone who doesn't know, VMware has doubled down in open source in the past 3 years, especially Kubernetes. I don't think Broadcom really understands how investment in open source works or for that matter cares. Half of my org of ~500 engineers works on upstream projects. Disclaimer: Current employee of VMware

I would be mildly interested in a 5 minute pitch of what VMware is offering these days, it's been 15 years since I've touched any of their products and the way they were doing things then really seems like it is becoming increasingly irrelevant so what have they been doing instead? It looks like my vague guess of "the same but also on top of cloud providers" seems to be about right given a quick glance at their websi…

VMware has several billion-dollar or more businesses...

- the core vSphere hypervisor and management software

- Vmware Cloud on AWS which is pretty big on its own, plus other cloudy things like datrium / disaster recovery as a service.

- cybersecurity (carbon black and secure state), which is similar to what Symantec does, will be an interesting overlap

- endpoint management (security for desktops, mobile) which was AirWatch

- management (monitoring & automation) aka. vRealize and Cloud Health

- workspace / single sign on, similar to okta (Workspace ONE)

- virtual desktops (Horizon) which compete with Citrix

- software defined networking (NSX) which competes with F5, Cisco, Juniper etc.

- modern apps (Tanzu) which is largely open source... containers & developer tools & data services & agile consulting, e.g. Spring, Apache Tomcat, RabbitMQ, Greenplum, Wavefront, Bitnami / Kubeapps, Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry and Pivotal Labs (now Tanzu Labs)

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#276

Post by monocasa »

technothrasher wrote: post #235
monocasa wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they ever stop blatantly violating the GPL in ESX? Taking driver code out of Linux and just running it inside the hypervisor has to be the most brazen violations possible.

> Did they ever stop blatantly violating the GPL in ESX? If you mean, did they remove the vmkLinux layer from their product? Yes, they did, back in 2019 soon after they won the lawsuit on procedural grounds (the court ruled the person who brought the suit didn't have standing, and it was upheld on appeal).

It sounds like vmklinux is deprecated but still shipping for older drivers if I'm understanding their documentation. https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2019/04/what-is-the-impact-... vSphere 6.7 (which they're still supporting and shipping updates to as it was only released last June), includes the vmklinux driver stack.

For those reading along at home, that's a shim layer to link GPLed code into the closed source hypervisor.

It's absurd that the company responsible for some of the most blatant license violations in the industry (and is still actively continuing to violate after a decade) is trying to push itself as open source friendly.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#277

Post by noizejoy »

indymike wrote: post #185
ghc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for a second, imagine a company that isn't a software company, but needs software to run its business. Think manufacturing, logistics, shipping, construction, food (industrial scale egg production, for example) etc. There's a lot of companies like that out there...in fact it's almost all of them. Those companies run all their boring, essential software (accounting, ERPs, etc.) on VMWare, Oracle, Azure, etc. Sinc…

> Why should enterprises deal with Linux directly? Um... perhaps because it is less costly and will lead to better capabilities, more reliability, less complexity than burying it under 18 layers of apis, containers, and virtual machines.

> … perhaps because it is less costly and will lead to better capabilities, more reliability, less complexity than burying it under 18 layers of apis, containers, and virtual machines.

Over the years, I’ve come to suspect that maybe the technology is less of a differentiator in the overall effectiveness of a company’s IT environment than the people running it.

And with IT staffing supply having lagged behind demand (as also evidenced by relatively high salaries in IT vs many other professions), you could easily argue that it was (still is?) historically more difficult to hire good IT people than in many other professions.

And arguably that’s making outsourcing of IT needs relatively more attractive than outsourcing of other business functions where reasonably competent leadership and staffing is easier to come by.

And arguably, capturing many of the benefits of Open Source require more IT competency than using off the shelf mainstream commercial software. If I’m using the same crap that everyone of my competitors is using, none of us win or lose on that. But when using Open Source, I’m more likely to depend on the quality of my IT leadership and staff to outcompete my competitors. And unless a CEO is quite IT literate, s/he probably doesn’t want that additional headache of becoming good at figuring out how to hire good IT leadership.

So I’d hazard a guess, that insourcing and the use of Open Source will become more attractive for many corporations only if/when IT salaries drop more in line with other professions.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#278

Post by influx »

nyx wrote: post #274
stormbrew wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be really interested in an “i used both” comparison between esxi’s free offering and proxmox for this sort of purpose. I imagine esxi might be more polished, but also more limited.

I've used both, though not for anything especially complicated. Your guess about the polish level is correct; ESXi blows Proxmox out of the water interface-wise, especially for some specific tasks like configuring networks or managing PCI passthrough devices. As far as "more limited" goes, I can't say I noticed much of a feature discrepancy, although being open and just sitting atop KVM, Proxmox doesn't have any of t…

Excellent point on hardware support. I'm running several years old Xeon chips in my server, and ESXI is already complaining they might not be supported in a future release.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#279

Post by scarface74 »

nimbius wrote: post #148
ghc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for a second, imagine a company that isn't a software company, but needs software to run its business. Think manufacturing, logistics, shipping, construction, food (industrial scale egg production, for example) etc. There's a lot of companies like that out there...in fact it's almost all of them. Those companies run all their boring, essential software (accounting, ERPs, etc.) on VMWare, Oracle, Azure, etc. Sinc…

but thats just it, this argument only ever works if you dont care about performance or features and believe the marketing. You make eggs, and your target fixation only allows you to see eggs, so these companies hold some mysterious value to you. KVM performance is orders of magnitude better than VMWare and handles migrations snapshots imports and exports without additional byzantine license agreements or mandatory mi…

Would you suggest that all companies write their own office suites? Manage their own SSO solutions? Manage their own mail servers? Manage their own expense system (Concur)? Manage their own payroll (ADP)? Every small company manage their own benefits (Insperity)? Do whatever Workday does?

The health care organizations overwhelmingly use third party EHR/EMR systems and schools use third party companies for enrollment (Blackboard).

It doesn’t make sense to bring any those in house.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#280

Post by imwillofficial »

TomVDB wrote: post #216
vkat wrote: post #196

For anyone who doesn't know, VMware has doubled down in open source in the past 3 years, especially Kubernetes. I don't think Broadcom really understands how investment in open source works or for that matter cares. Half of my org of ~500 engineers works on upstream projects. Disclaimer: Current employee of VMware

After being acquired by Avago, Broadcom ceased to be a single company. It’s a conglomerate of entities/BUs that are explicitly asked to NOT work cooperatively, so that each entity can be sold at moment’s notice if it doesn’t deliver the right financial results anymore. Chances are that the current leadership doesn’t care about how VMware operates, as long as it cuts enough costs to increase metrics that Wall Street c…

I was part of Symantec when we were acquired. I didn’t agree with all Broadcoms moves, but they empowered us to really cut the fact and focus on what we were good at.
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