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Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

reuters.com

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Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#61

Post by AndrewStephens »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #35
formerly_proven wrote: post #3

Can we like... stop building these ginormous conglomerates? Thanks.

If intellectual property (specifically software patents) were weakened, this would be less of a problem, right? Companies don't buy companies, they buy IP, as I understand it.

Maaaaaybe. I am not a fan of software patents but intellectual property laws are the only thing stopping Big Company A from just cloning Small Company B's product. At least now they have to go to the trouble of buying them.

Of course, it goes both ways and laws often favor the strong against the weak. But it is not all one-sided.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#62

Post by sithadmin »

kasey_junk wrote: post #43
acd wrote: post #37

Ponders if it will payoff as an investment. Hyper visors are nowdays commodity. Workloads are moving from enterprise onsite datacenters to the cloud. Hyperscalers AWS,Google and Azure running the cloud are running work loads on Linux KVM kernel based virtual machines.

I was under the impression each of those had custom hypervisors? While perhaps still Linux that doesn’t seem like a commodity.

They're 'custom', but are heavily derivative of KVM in the case of AWS (Nitro) and GCP. Azure runs a fork of Hyper-V, AFAIK.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#63

Post by ghaff »

bombcar wrote: post #28
monkey_monkey wrote: post #17

Do these type of transactions ever end up well for either the acquirer or the acquired company?

EMC bought VMware for $650 million and Dell bought EMC for $74 billion and now sold VMware for $61 billion so it worked out for someone.

The EMC purchase of VMware was probably one of the best tech acquisitions of all time. At least financially. You can reasonably argue whether VMware's overall trajectory was better or worse as a result; in any case, most of the original leadership team ended up departing.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#64

Post by bombcar »

ghaff wrote: post #63
bombcar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EMC bought VMware for $650 million and Dell bought EMC for $74 billion and now sold VMware for $61 billion so it worked out for someone.

The EMC purchase of VMware was probably one of the best tech acquisitions of all time. At least financially. You can reasonably argue whether VMware's overall trajectory was better or worse as a result; in any case, most of the original leadership team ended up departing.

Someone knew something - that's an insanely low valuation for a major player in the (then just starting) virtualization market.

But at the time virtualization was considered as something "to keep that old Windows NT server/software running" - not foundational for all cloud services ever.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#65

Post by nicoburns »

streblo wrote: post #51
nousermane wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...absent functioning antitrust legislation, yes.

Is there an antitrust case to be made here? Antitrust means a lot more than just 'big company'.

You seem to be asking if there is a case within current legislation. Whereas the parent is suggesting that more cases ought to be covered by future stricter legislation (which could at least in principle be as simple as "big company").

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#66

Post by netr0ute »

AndrewStephens wrote: post #61
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If intellectual property (specifically software patents) were weakened, this would be less of a problem, right? Companies don't buy companies, they buy IP, as I understand it.

Maaaaaybe. I am not a fan of software patents but intellectual property laws are the only thing stopping Big Company A from just cloning Small Company B's product. At least now they have to go to the trouble of buying them. Of course, it goes both ways and laws often favor the strong against the weak. But it is not all one-sided.

> Big Company A from just cloning Small Company B's product

That's called competition

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#67

Post by sithadmin »

caymanjim wrote: post #59

I didn't know VMware was still a thing. What do they even do? Who uses any of it?

VMware has the largest on-premises hypervisor footprint by a large margin and sells a zillion other software products to layer on top. Pretty much every large public company has a VMware footprint in their data center, and frequently have their entire on-prem infrastructure built on top of vSphere.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#68

Post by sbarre »

bluGill wrote: post #50
mbreese wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t about the hypervisor. This is about the enterprise sales. A bank isn’t going to run their data center on qemu, regardless of the performance. They are going to go with the company that can sell them support contracts with dedicated engineers to answer the phone.

Big companies are starting to learn that free open source can be supported in house, in some cases it is even cheaper, but in others the flexibility of being in control of when a much needed by only you feature is developed is a big deal. Open source also is never acquired and the price jacked up to beyond the worth but they are forced to pay the price anyway because they can't get off before their license expires.

> Big companies are starting to learn that free open source can be supported in house

Sure but the problem here is can you find and retain the people who can do that work, if you are a big lumbering "un-interesting" company where tech is not your core focus? In most cases the answer is "no".

There's a reason major software vendors provide professional services. If their customers could reliably hire and (most importantly) retain experts on their own, they wouldn't need professional services.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#69

Post by crispyambulance »

monkey_monkey wrote: post #17

Do these type of transactions ever end up well for either the acquirer or the acquired company?

> Do these type of transactions ever end up well for either the acquirer or the acquired company?

It depends on what you mean by "end up well" and who, exactly, is meant by "acquirer" and "acquired". Yes, they're lucrative and worthwhile from the point of finance people, a rarified sliver of stake-holders and the law firms who buzz around to service all these. If they weren't you would not be seeing them as much.

From the point of view of technology advancement, the professionals who want to actually WORK in these domains, and the customers who depend on the products? No. These mergers/acquisitions are at best a mixed bag and more often a downgrade, or worst of all, a career-derailing adjustment.

Re: Broadcom to acquire VMware for $61B

#70

Post by Octoth0rpe »

kortilla wrote: post #57
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If intellectual property (specifically software patents) were weakened, this would be less of a problem, right? Companies don't buy companies, they buy IP, as I understand it.

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.

> I can’t think of any of the big tech companies that even use VMware.

I would be shocked if every single 'big' tech company didn't use _some_ vmware product _somewhere_ internally. Their software portfolio is a hell of a lot bigger than just the actual vmware product. Example: where I work we use the vmware product Carbon Black for 'endpoint protection', which as I understand it is virus scanning + some amount of port monitoring.

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