It will be probably more. I talked with sysadmin from some smaller provider in my country few months ago. And he told me that the migration will take them for most systems about 2 years (depreciation of hardware) and for some machines about 5 years.

So lot of customers are in process of replacing it but it will take multiple years.

Many SMBs will walk away at next server refresh.

VMware is walking dead.

We’re currently testing Nutanix and Proxmox for smaller clients.

Proxmox support is similar (~65%) in cost to VMware licensing, but it’s not likely to pull this sudden increase BS. Plus it’s capabilities are significant for SMB.

That’s the point. Broadcom focuses on only the top consumers and desire everyone else to go away. They then focus only on what those top consumers want and their support staff can be cut down considerably.

It’s an interesting tactic that they have mastered.

Eventually even those customers will look at alternatives too if there’s only like 50 companies worldwide using it.

Yeah, this is one scenario where the principles in F2P games like MOBAs applies to the business world. Focusing only on the top X companies and losing that market share has a cascading effect where it’s harder to find competent administrators, it’s harder for those administrators to find support online (which then means they have to call for the support they pay for - which while good in the short term for VMWare, is frustrating for the customer, and means that the extra money they’re charging has to partially be used to cover techs to provide said report). The little fish in a market like this help to provide what is essentially free troubleshooting online via stack overflow etc. And giving that market share to competitors gives them the cash flow and experience to build a support system online and improve their product, and then when over the big fish.