During the Gartner event, Palmer suggested that Broadcom doesn’t view hyperscalers as strategic partners and vice versa. AWS felt that Broadcom was not allowing AWS and its channel partners to sell VMware Cloud on AWS, telling CRN in May 2024 that it was “disappointed” by the news. However, hyperscalers, including AWS, are still interested in doing business with VMware end users “because they know over time they will convert you to the ‘proper cloud,'” Palmer said.
Palmer also offered her thoughts on VMware migrations, which companies have described to ARS as expensive and time-consuming, especially for organizations with limited manpower or managing other large IT projects. Given VMware’s lack of real competitors, Palmer suggested a partial migration, which she believes should take less time (up to a year) than a full migration (which she pegged at at least three years).
“We’re all dependent on hypervisors, and that needs to change,” Palmer said.
Despite losing customers, VMware is gaining revenue from Broadcom thanks to the company’s new focus on subscriptions, bundles and higher prices. In its latest earnings report, Broadcom reported that infrastructure software revenue, largely driven by VMware, rose 25 percent from a year earlier to $6.6 billion.
