Vmware Before Broadcom Was ‘a Unicorn In Fluffy Cloudland’

In the 20 months since Broadcom took over VMware, Yves Sandfort has become the most ardent and prolific commentator on the acquisition. The CEO of Germany-headquartered VMware partner Comdivision Consulting has created almost 300 videos and still has plenty to say about where VMware went wrong, and where Broadcom needs to improve.

The Register’s virtualization desk caught up with Sandfort the day before VMware’s annual Explore conference in Las Vegas, where he told us that before the acquisition the virtualization giant dominated the market, but was a mess.

“They were basically in unicorn and fluffy cloudland,” Sandfort said, backing up that fantasy analogy by pointing to numerous illogical interactions with the company.

In one instance, he says that he devised and sold a solution that VMware happily listed as an available product and said it was possible to build. However, the company couldn’t issue the necessary license keys in the required configuration. He feels certain that mess played out for multiple products.

Sandfort said that renewing VMware licenses was never easy. The company typically delivered a long spreadsheet that described existing entitlements, but that document was often inaccurate, leaving customers to unpick a puzzle.

Sandfort also told The Register that a VMware development team created a standalone version of a product designed to manage VMware apps in the hope that non-VMware users might buy it. That vastly optimistic idea consumed resources, without ever producing a sale … but did contribute to the complexity of VMware’s product list.

VMware’s channel program, he says, was generous but loose.

“Money was more or less thrown at partners,” he said. “You could get $10,000 for doing a proof of concept (PoC) with a customer, and another $10,000 for doing it in Europe. There were enormous funds for enablement and stuff like that.”

But partners were never held accountable for outcomes. A PoC could go nowhere, but the partner had already been paid and VMware might not follow up.

They were wasting a seat we could have used for someone who really wanted to learn

Funds also flowed for partner training, even for channel players who were not strongly committed to VMware. Sandfort became a VMware trainer for a time and told The Register he often saw course attendees all-but ignore his presentations. And when he failed them for effective non-attendance, VMware partner managers asked why he did so.

“They were basically wasting a seat we could have used for someone who really wanted to learn,” he complained.

Expected and necessary changes

Sandfort learned of VMware’s imperfections because Comdivision is a long-term and committed partner. In 2022, it became the first partner to earn all eight of VMware’s Master Service Competencies, expertise that helped the business to expand into Austria, the UK, and the USA. He personally holds the VCDX, VMware’s masters-level certification.

The CEO therefore wanted and needed the acquisition to succeed and sought out Broadcom’s M&A team before the deal closed.

He said Broadcom’s message at the time was clear: It planned to focus on enterprise customers, simplify products, and prioritize partners who wanted to sell VMware’s entire stack. Sandfort said he observed this strategy working after Broadcom acquired CA and Symantec, deals he said saw an increase in revenue and customers.

Sandfort is therefore pleased that Broadcom did the things it promised, creating bundles of products, emphasizing whole-of-platform sales, trimming its channel, and prioritizing large customers.

The CEO thinks those who feel aggrieved by these actions are being selectively outraged because established enterprise software vendors like SAP and IBM have always focused on big clients and declined to work with smaller organizations.

He also feels that criticism of Broadcom’s decision to sell only software bundles – which some customers feel compels them to buy products they don’t need in order to get the tech they rely on – is unfair.

“The last time I checked my Microsoft 365 subscription, there are 50 products in there which I have never even heard about, but I pay for them. So that’s more or less the same story,” he said.

Sandfort also disputes accounts that Broadcom’s policies always resulted in increased prices, saying he’s seen some quotes come back up to 30 percent cheaper. And he challenges VMware customers to revisit their historical license costs, saying he asked one to do so and they reported annual price increases of ten percent or more, often disguised as “currency conversion” catchups.

Any price rises from Broadcom, he insists, therefore aren’t unusual.

Willing to admit mistakes

Before the acquisition completed, Comdivision pushed for a meeting with Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, a request that met with resistance.

Sandfort said feedback from Broadcom suggested Tan “doesn’t necessarily see too much value in speaking to partners.” But he eventually secured a meeting, others followed, and Sandfort now refers to Broadcom’s CEO as “Hock”, suggesting he’s on first-name terms. Broadcom now listens to partners, and is willing to make rapid change to help them help end-users get the most from the VMware platform.

Which is not to say Broadcom is getting everything right. Sandfort said that when Broadcom dumped small cloud operators from its partner program, it did not understand the importance of some niche players and the fact some serve giant customers. He said Broadcom’s latest channel purge repeated that error.

Broadcom’s still making some mistakes with partners, he says, such as foreshadowing big changes in cryptic emails that arrive on Fridays, or in the days before holiday periods, and therefore cause considerable anxiety in the community.

He’s also concerned that Broadcom has been vague about the future of some products, but is buoyed by whispers he hears about changes to licensing that will make it more flexible.

Overall, he thinks that Broadcom has made many necessary changes to VMware, done so at speed, and made fewer mistakes than he typically sees after acquisitions.

Sandfort acknowledges that Broadcom’s changes have proven difficult for many VMware stakeholders, but challenged them to look for upsides that come from adopting the full Cloud Foundation private cloud suite.

And he also reminded the VMware community that it’s a business, and that Broadcom is making business decisions.

Not riding a unicorn in cloudland. ®

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