Broadcom has willingly dug its VMware hole, says cloud CEO

Civo's Mark Boost says price hikes appear designed to retain whales while tossing back small fry

interview Broadcom has faced a lot of heat for the direction it's taken VMware after acquiring it – and much of what has happened has confirmed the fears Virtzilla customers expressed well before that deal closed. 

Mark Boost, CEO of UK-based cloud firm Civo, told The Register in an interview that Broadcom's strategy seems to be one of tossing most VMware clients to the wind while trying to retain the largest in a bid to drum up profits. You can watch the full interview below.

"It was very clear … that the focus was on just 600 accounts, I believe. And there were another 6,000 customers mentioned that they want to sustain," Boost told us. "It was mentioned specifically that a hundred thousand customers would trail off over time."

Many of those customers have expressed reservations over forced bundle pricing that Boost said has resulted in considerably higher prices. 

"We've seen as much as 10x price increases that people have told us about," Boost noted. "Typically we're hearing them from people that are saying, you know, anything from three to five [x higher pricing] on average." 

"Time will tell" whether Broadcom can claw its way out of this hole, Boost said, "but a lot of this is by design." ®

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