As many know, Broadcom is set to complete the VMware acquisition in late October. It’s rumored that many layoffs are coming that will affect product development, sales and support. Customers are already reporting a decline in service as well as a steep increase in pricing. We believe it will get worse.
Tracy Woo, Senior Analyst, Forrester, reported that after Broadcom took over, “CA and Symantec customers saw massive price hikes, worsening support, and stopped investing in innovation.” Woo concluded, “VMware customers would be wise to have an exit plan.”
Simon Sharwood, The Register, reports that, “Broadcom’s stated strategy is very simple: focus on 600 customers who will struggle to change suppliers… focus on that small pool, and trim R&D by not thinking about the needs of other customers.”
As a former employee of a company Broadcom acquired, I witnessed it personally. Sales, marketing, R&D and support teams were cut to near skeleton crews, all of which significantly affected the company’s products, product development, and overall customer experience. All the work we had invested in sales and support teams were cut and SMB customers were left hanging. The same pattern has occurred with every company Broadcom acquired, including Emulex, Brocade, CA and Symantec. That means most sales and support people you know will be let go. Their roles will be combined with ‘generic’ Broadcom sales and support teams who don’t specialize in VMware products. Some roles and functions may be moved to the channel. Currently, Broadcom is set to eliminate approximately 17,000 people, nearly half of its former 35,000 employee count. It’s possible these numbers are on the low side.
And if you’re not one of VMware’s top 600 customers, you should be concerned about the future of VMware product development and support. It’s likely that most new features will be tailored to meet the needs of VMware’s biggest customers and ignore the needs of small-to-medium sized businesses and organizations.
That’s why it’s no surprise that long term VMware customers who have been on the fence, even loyal customers, are now seriously considering VMware exit strategies that include moving to a Microsoft hybrid cloud solution.
Microsoft hybrid cloud enables organizations to quickly scale out new applications, improve security, compliance, backup, and disaster recovery, gain better control and insight over disparate networks, take advantage of cloud and hybrid virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), containers, and SQL solutions, and optimize cost.
At DataON, we know that transitioning to a completely new infrastructure can feel like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Data loss, extended downtime, potential performance decreases, learning curves, and significant employee training all pass through an IT Director’s mind and make him/her reluctant to change. But depending on which Microsoft hybrid cloud provider you choose, this doesn’t have to happen.
DataON is a different kind of Microsoft hybrid cloud solution provider. Imagine us as your skydiving instructor, plane, parachute, and safe landing when transitioning from VMware to Microsoft. We exclusively specialize in Microsoft hybrid cloud solutions and our team are Microsoft experts.
DataON delivers a complete turnkey Microsoft hybrid cloud solution that is easy to procure, simple to deploy and maintain, provides the highest security and reliability, and includes world-class support.
It includes validated hardware tailored to your needs and pre-installed Azure Stack HCI software that includes software-defined storage, virtualization, software-defined networking and complete seamless integration with Microsoft Azure and Azure Arc.
As a software as a service (SaaS), Azure Stack HCI is based on the same software stack as Azure. You get more frequent security updates and better protection than a Windows Server solution. Security vulnerabilities are quickly identified in Azure, which improves Azure Stack HCI security. This is one of the many benefits of a complete Microsoft edge to cloud solution.
Our Microsoft experts will provide the assistance you need to successfully deploy Azure hybrid workloads. Whether you’re looking to implement a cloud or hybrid cloud VDI solution with Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) for Azure Stack HCI (preview), Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) hybrid or Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes w/wo Managed SQL instances, or a variety of AI solutions at the edge, DataON can help you in your journey to hybrid cloud.
Unlike VMware’s complicated and expensive pricing tier system, Azure Stack HCI pricing is simple with a flat subscription fee per core. Different from VMware, with Azure Stack HCI you’ll never have to pay for extra features you’ll never use. If you want to add an Azure service, you only pay for what you need.
When it comes to sales, service and support, DataON is much different than large OEMs. We offer TRUE 24×7 technical support for hardware and software and 24×7 integrated joint support from DataON and Microsoft with warm case exchange. No more going through the runaround with OEM tier one, tier two, and tier three support or being handed off to another department. Even though OEMs say they offer 24/7 support, at different tier levels, many only operate Monday through Friday, 8AM-5PM. Even worse, you might even be left on your own if the OEM doesn’t support your software or application. We hear it all the time.
DataON customers get white glove treatment with one single point of service and a team that will work with you until your IT issue is resolved. We won’t pawn you off to another department and none of our customers fall between the cracks.
Now that Winter is Coming for VMware, let DataON help you make the transition from VMware to Microsoft as seamless as possible and ensure a successful deployment.