Live data from Hacker News

Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

reuters.com

321–330 of 430 posts

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#321
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…

You can do the same thing with Proxmox VE. IMO, Proxmox is a much better choice for stand-alone VM hosts. The UI alone is certainly miles better. Where VMware shines is when you want to virtualize multiple datacenters and manage them all from a single browser window. Getting hundreds of hosts and datastores managed all under one vCenter umbrella all while eliminating single points of failure, while not trivial, is th…

not super critical but is there a terraform provider for proxmox? I looked at proxmox a while back when building my home server but went with esxi free because of the community provider - https://github.com/josenk/terraform-provider-esxi

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not in the software industry. Nothing VMware has in pure IP is that special. I can’t think of any of the big tech companies that even use VMware. Broadcom is paying for the huge enterprise customer base, sales and support connections, mindshare, and engineering org that has proven adaptable to market demands.

You don't have to think, you can just browse their list, filter by industry, and have fun as you will: https://www.vmware.com/company/customers/index.html#

Note that this is just a tiny subset of companies that use VMWare (those that have writeups). I've worked for some very big companies that used it but aren't listed.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#323
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fascinating … your very comprehensive list does not contain the only VMware products I have ever cared about: workstation and fusion.

And has a lot of "similar to {thing I have actually heard of}"

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can but asia won’t. We can stop and let Asian tech giants eat us alive.

really bizarre that you blame Asians when tech giants exist in other regions. Really didn't expect to see this dog whistling on HN. Also are you talking about Israel or Bangladesh? They are in Asia too.

>really bizarre that you blame Asians when tech giants exist in other regions.

it's not bizarre in the least if you consider any of the metrics that attempt to quantify corporate size and holdings.

Here's a market cap index[0], do you notice anything?

One thing that I notice is that every company in the top 25 is either American (.. or by some legal stretches, Irish) or from somewhere in Asia.

>Really didn't expect to see this dog whistling on HN.

"We can stop and let Asian tech giants eat us alive." is neither coded, nor suggestive -- nor is it written in such a way as to avoid condemnation or blame, It's a plain statement.

Can you describe how it's a dog whistle, and to signal which faction? I don't get it.

Asia is too vast for a group of people to be against the entirety, no? At least I haven't ran into the anti-Asia faction, yet; but I have ran into plenty of anti-country folks.

[0]: https://companiesmarketcap.com/tech/largest-tech-companies-b...

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#325
It's so sad to see good integrated tech products being bought out just so the market can squeeze it and its customers dry of money, leaving nothing but a dry soulless husk of finance-driven leadership squeezing blood from desperate vendor-locked customers, just so swarms of consultants can move everyone that can afford them off onto the next integrated product to rinse and repeat.

The current solution to business management feels suboptimal. If companies are like persons maybe they should be organized with a more integrated 'body', where the 'head' doesn't have total power to sell out the rest of the integrated parts for its own gain. Co-op like organizational structures might avoid this issue, for example.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#326
post #201
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gmail is a market leader only because it is good enough (and at the start it was even better than competition) and because it was free - and still is for some cases. Can't comment on Google Apps, never used them. Otherwise, I'm not sure I would put Google in the mix with Oracle / MS and others. They are firmly non-enterprise, in that it is notoriously difficult to get any support from them, even if you are paying (th…

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…

5 - 10 years back, Oracle was very far ahead of the database game and there was no practical competitor regarding performance, query optimization, storage management and enterprisey management features. For quite some time, if you needed a large central relational store for a business, Oracle was the only answer.

The main change is that MariaDB and PostgreSQL have caught up a lot of ground over the last years, so OracleDB has been losing the edge they have been paid for.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#327
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…

No, it only ever works if you care about your core competencies more than performance or features of the software products you run your business on.

Remember, not only are most non-software companies better at their business than they are at software, they're also not hiring from the same tech talent pool, they're not paying their tech people as much, they're not letting the tech run their business.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#328
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with you - and you are still missing the point. The enterprises are buying a service. They don't care that it is running on AHWRGGG instead of TLMWBBB (which is soooo much better). What they care about is that it runs, and when it doesn't, that someone fixes it. This is it. Could you run everything on PostgreSQL instead of Oracle? Yes, take a look at EnterpriseDB. I guess Oracle just sells better? (guessing h…

You could run everything on Xen instead of VMware, except as you point out - you can't really. Oracle is similarly positioned. Their database software is just one piece of a much larger ecosystem of products. An "enterprise solution", if you will. Oracle actually competes with VMware in the broader enterprise space.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#329
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lease a car every four years in part so that I don’t have to deal with the inevitable car repairs that come after that point. For some — but not all — people, that’s a preferable option. For some — but not all — companies, enterprise tech is a preferable option.

I typically own cars 4-10 years old. I'm currently still happy with a 2008 model that has had exactly one non-maintenance, non-upgrade, cost -- which wouldn't even have prevented using it in any way, I just like the emissions system to be as eco-friendly as it can. "Inevitable repairs after 4 years" is just a delusion, and silly. Might I suggest you be honest with yourself and say you like the new car feel? Maybe eve…

Wow, you argued with the parent about their own priorities, and then proved their point anyway.

Yes, they don't want to think about what tires to buy. Or whether it needs to be fixed or not. The fact that repairs are not in inevitability but a possibility is part of the point.

The parent is making the point that they're rather throw money at the problem and not have to think about it, not that they've precisely run the numbers on all of the possibilities and decided their outcome is the most cost-effective.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#330
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fascinating … your very comprehensive list does not contain the only VMware products I have ever cared about: workstation and fusion.

A few years ago, most of the US dev team for workstation was laid off in favor of a non-US team.
Post reply on HN