You’ve been talking about cloud since it became the new normal. At every company offsite or quarterly IT meeting, someone mentions it, someone hedges, and someone says “yes, eventually.” Then VMware renews, and the conversation resets. But Broadcom just ended that conversation and made moving to the cloud a no-brainer.
We’ve all seen the VMWare renewal quotes, with some reporting Broadcom taxes of 2x, 5x, or even 10x. Support fees are climbing toward 30% of license value, the new 72-core minimum bills you for capacity you’ll never run, and perpetual licenses are gone. Even AWS itself stopped reselling VMware Cloud on AWS in April 2024. When a hyperscaler walks away, that’s a big signal.
This isn’t a price hike, it’s a strategy tax, and you’re paying a premium to stay on VMware.
But, here’s the upside nobody is talking about: the Broadcom tax is the forcing function for that business case you’ve been trying to get approved for a decade. The CFO…