Since Broadcom’s $61 billion acquisition of VMware closed in November 2023, Broadcom has been charging ahead with major changes to the company’s personnel and products. In December, Broadcom began laying off thousands of employees and stopped selling perpetually licensed versions of VMware products, pushing its customers toward more stable and lucrative software subscriptions instead. In January, it ended its partner programs, potentially disrupting sales and service for many users of its products.
This week, Broadcom is making a change that is smaller in scale but possibly more relevant for home users of its products: The free version of VMware’s vSphere Hypervisor, also known as ESXi, is being discontinued.
You are either going all in with VMware or you’re dead to them. Full suite or nothing, take your pick.
The moment that broadcom bought them the writing was on the wall. Many people have already jumped ship.
To what?
I’ve got a client who is currently a vmWare shop that (along with moving datacenters) is migrating to hyper-v when they rebuild.