An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: VMware has announced that its VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation desktop hypervisors are now free to everyone for commercial, educational, and personal use. In May, the company also made VMware Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro free for personal use, allowing students and home users to set up virtualized test labs and experiment with other OSs by running virtual machines and Kubernetes clusters on Windows, Linux, and macOS devices. Starting this week, the Pro versions and the two products will no longer be available under a paid subscription model.

"Effective immediately, both VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation will transition away from the paid subscription model, meaning you can now utilize these tools without any cost. The paid versions of these offerings -- Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro -- are no longer available for purchase," said Broadcom product marketing director Himanshu Singh. "If you're currently under a commercial contract, you can rest easy knowing that your agreement will remain in effect until the end of your term. You will continue to receive the full level of service and enterprise-grade support as per your contract."

While the free versions will include all the features available in the paid products, Broadcom will no longer provide users with support ticketing for troubleshooting. Broadcom plans to continue developing new features and improvements and ensure that updates are rolled out promptly. "We're actively investing in new features, usability improvements, and other valuable enhancements," Singh added. "Our engineering teams are committed to maintaining our high standards for stability, with timely updates and reliable performance." You can download VMware Fusion and VMware Workstation here (sign-in required).

Google will require all new mobile chipsets launching with Android 15 to support its Android Virtualization Framework (AVF), a significant shift in the operating system's security architecture. The mandate, reports AndroidAuthority that got a hold of Android's latest Vendor Software Requirements document, affects major chipmakers including Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Samsung's Exynos division. New processors like the Snapdragon 8 Elite and Dimensity 9400 must implement AVF support to receive Android certification.

AVF, introduced with Android 13, creates isolated environments for security-sensitive operations including code compilation and DRM applications. The framework also enables full operating system virtualization, with Google demonstrating Chrome OS running in a virtual machine on Android devices.

After closing a $69 billion deal to buy virtualization technology company VMware a year ago, Broadcom wasted no time ushering in big changes to the ways customers and partners buy and sell VMware offerings -- and many of those clients aren't happy. ArsTechnica: To get a deeper look at the impact that rising costs and overhauls like the end of VMware perpetual license sales have had on VMware users, Ars spoke with several companies in the process of quitting the software due to Broadcom's changes. Here's what's pushing them over the edge.

For some, VMware prices more than tripled under Broadcom Broadcom closed its VMware acquisition in November 2023, and by December 2023, the company announced that it would stop selling perpetual VMware licenses. VMware products were previously sold under 8,000 SKUs, but they have now been combined into a few bundle packages. Additionally, higher CPU core requirements per CPU subscription have made VMware more expensive for some reseller partners.

"As on-premises virtualization projects move from [enterprise license agreements] and perpetual licenses to new bundling, socket-to-core ratios, and consumption models, the costs and pricing can increase two or three times," Gartner's 2024 Hype Cycle for Data Center Infrastructure Technologies report that released in June reads. Numerous VMware customers I spoke with said their VMware costs rose 300 percent after Broadcom's takeover. Some companies have cited even higher price hikes -- including AT&T, which claimed that Broadcom proposed a 1,050 percent price hike. AT&T is suing Broadcom over perpetual license support and says it has looked into VMware alternatives.

"Google is developing a Linux terminal app for Android," reports the blog Android Authority. "The Terminal app can be enabled via developer options and will install Debian in a virtual machine.

"This app is likely intended for Chromebooks but might also be available for mobile devices, too." While there are ways to run some Linux apps on Android devices, all of those methods have some limitations and aren't officially supported by Google. Fortunately, though, Google is finally working on an official way to run Linux apps on Android... This Terminal app is part of the Android Virtualization Framework (AVF) and contains a WebView that connects to a Linux virtual machine via a local IP address, allowing you to run Linux commands from the Android host...

A set of patches under the tag "ferrochrome-dev-option" was recently submitted to the Android Open Source Project that adds a new developer option called Linux terminal under Settings > System > Developer options. This new option will enable a "Linux terminal app that runs inside the VM," according to its proposed description. Toggling this option enables the Terminal app that's bundled with AVF...

Google is still working on improving the Terminal app as well as AVF before shipping this feature... What's particularly interesting about the patch that adds these settings is that it was tested on "tangorpro" and "komodo," the codenames for the Pixel Tablet and Pixel 9 Pro XL respectively. This suggests that the Terminal app won't be limited to Chromebooks like the new desktop versions of Chrome for Android.

Nvidia is banking on its software expertise and broad GPU ecosystem to stay ahead in the fiercely competitive AI chip market, CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview with Goldman Sachs Wednesday. Huang pointed to NVIDIA's large base of installed GPUs and their software compatibility as key strengths.

Huang highlighted three key elements of Nvidia's competitive moat: a large installed base of GPUs across multiple platforms, the ability to enhance hardware with software like domain-specific libraries, and expertise in building rack-level systems. The CEO said Nvidia's chip design prowess, noting the company has developed seven different chips for its upcoming Blackwell platform.

These comments come as Nvidia faces increasing competition from rivals. Addressing supply chain concerns, Huang said NVIDIA has sufficient in-house intellectual property to shift manufacturing if necessary without significant disruption. The company plans to begin shipping Blackwell-based products in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, with volume production ramping up in fiscal 2026, according to Huang.

From the note that Goldman Sachs sent to its clients: 1) Accelerated Computing: Mr. Huang highlighted his long-held view that Moore's Law was no longer delivering the rate of innovation it had in the past and, as such, was driving computation inflation in Data Centers. Further, he noted that the densification and acceleration of the $1 trillion data center infrastructure installed base alone would drive growth over the next 10 years, as it would deliver material performance improvement and/or cost savings.

2) Customer ROI: Mr. Huang noted that we have hit the end of transistor scaling that enabled better utilization rates and cost reductions in the previous virtualization and cloud computing cycles. He explained that, while using a GPU to augment a CPU will drive an increase in cost in absolute terms (~2x) in the case of Spark (distributed processing system and analytics engine for big data), the net cost benefit could be as large as ~10x for an application like Spark given the speed up of ~20x. From a revenue generation perspective, Mr. Huang shared that hyperscale customers can generate $5 in rental revenue for every $1 spent on Nvidia's infrastructure, given sustained strength in the demand for accelerated computing.

The Register reports that Google "recently rewrote the firmware for protected virtual machines in its Android Virtualization Framework using the Rust programming language." And they add that Google "wants you to do the same, assuming you deal with firmware."

A post on Google's security blog by Android engineers Ivan Lozano and Dominik Maier promises to show "how to gradually introduce Rust into your existing firmware," adding "You'll see how easy it is to boost security with drop-in Rust replacements, and we'll even demonstrate how the Rust toolchain can handle specialized bare-metal targets."

This prompts the Register to quip that easy "is not a term commonly heard with regard to a programming language known for its steep learning curve." Citing the lack of high-level security mechanisms in firmware, which is often written in memory-unsafe languages such as C or C++, Lozano and Maier argue that Rust provides a way to avoid the memory safety bugs like buffer overflows and use-after-free that account for the majority of significant vulnerabilities in large codebases. "Rust provides a memory-safe alternative to C and C++ with comparable performance and code size," they note. "Additionally it supports interoperability with C with no overhead."
At one point the blog post explains that "You can replace existing C functionality by writing a thin Rust shim that translates between an existing Rust API and the C API the codebase expects." But their ultimate motivation is greater security. "Android's use of safe-by-design principles drives our adoption of memory-safe languages like Rust, making exploitation of the OS increasingly difficult with every release."

And the Register also got this quote from Lars Bergstrom, Google's director of engineering for Android Programming Languages (and chair of the Rust Foundation's board of directors). "At Google, we're increasing Rust's use across Android, Chromium, and more to reduce memory safety vulnerabilities. We're dedicated to collaborating with the Rust ecosystem to drive its adoption and provide developers with the resources and training they need to succeed.

"This work on bringing Rust to embedded and firmware addresses another critical part of the stack."

Security researchers from SafeBreach have found what they say is a Windows downgrade attack that's invisible, persistent, irreversible and maybe even more dangerous than last year's BlackLotus UEFI bootkit. From a report: After seeing the damage that UEFI bootkit could do by bypassing secure boot processes in Windows, SafeBreach's Alon Leviev became curious whether there were any other fundamental Windows components that could be abused in a similar manner. He hit the jackpot in one of the most unlikely places: The Windows update process.

"I found a way to take over Windows updates to update the system, but with control over all of the actual update contents," Leviev told us in an interview ahead of his Black Hat USA conference presentation today detailing his findings. Using his technique, having compromised a machine so that he could get in as a normal user, Leviev was able to control which files get updated, which registry keys are changed, which installers get used, and the like. And he was able to do all of it while side-stepping every single integrity verification implemented in the Windows update process. After that, "I was able to downgrade the OS kernel, DLLs, drivers ... basically everything that I wanted." To make matters worse, Leviev said that poking and prodding around the vulnerabilities he found enabled him to attack the entire Windows virtualization stack, including virtualization-based security (VBS) features that are supposed to isolate the kernel and make attacker access less valuable.

Apple's upcoming macOS 15 Sequoia will allow users to sign into iCloud and other Apple ID-related services from within virtual machines. This feature will be available for VMs running macOS 15 or newer, hosted on a Mac with macOS 15 or newer. ArsTechnica adds: But up until now, you haven't been able to sign into iCloud using macOS on a VM. This made the feature less useful for developers or users hoping to test iCloud features in macOS, or whose apps rely on some kind of syncing with iCloud, or people who just wanted easy access to their iCloud data from within a VM.

Google has acquired software virtualization company Cameyo to enhance ChromeOS's support for virtualized Windows apps. The acquisition follows a partnership between the two companies last year, which aimed to provide businesses with a seamless virtual application experience on ChromeOS devices. With Cameyo's technology, Google seeks to attract more enterprises to adopt ChromeOS by offering enhanced compatibility with legacy Windows applications while maintaining the simplicity and security of the ChromeOS ecosystem.

The companies didn't reveal the financial terms of the deal.

Dan Robinson reports via The Register: VMware has made another small but notable post-merger concession to users: the Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro desktop hypervisor products will now be free for personal use. The cloud and virtualization biz, now a Broadcom subsidiary, has announced that its Pro apps will be available under two license models: a "Free Personal Use" or a "Paid Commercial Use" subscription for organizations. Workstation Pro is available for PC users running Windows or Linux, while Fusion Pro is available for Mac systems with either Intel CPUs or Apple's own processors. The two products allow users to create a virtual machine on their local computer for the purpose of running a different operating system or creating a sandbox in which to run certain software. [...]

According to VMware, users will get to decide for themselves if their use case calls for a commercial subscription. There are no functional differences between the two versions, the company states, and the only visual difference is that the free version displays the text: "This product is licensed for personal use only." "This means that everyday users who want a virtual lab on their Mac, Windows, or Linux computer can do so for free simply by registering and downloading the bits from the new download portal located at support.broadcom.com," VMware says. Customers that require a paid commercial subscription must purchase through an authorized Broadcom Advantage partner.

The move also means that VMware's Workstation Player and Fusion Player products are effectively redundant as the Pro products now serve the same role, and so those will no longer be offered for purchase. Organizations with commercial licenses for Fusion Player 13 or Workstation Player 17 can continue to use these, however, and they will continue to be supported for existing end of life (EOL) and end of general support (EoGS) dates.

ReneR writes: A major T2 Linux milestone has been released, shipping with full support for 25 CPU architectures and several C libraries, as well as restored support for Intel IA-64 Itanium. Additionally, many vintage X.org DDX drivers were fixed and tested to work again, as well as complete support for the latest KDE 6 and GNOME 46.

T2 is known for its sophisticated cross compile support and support for nearly all existing CPU architectures: Alpha, Arc, ARM(64), Avr32, HPPA(64), IA64, M68k, MIPS(64), Nios2, PowerPC(64)(le), RISCV(64), s390x, SPARC(64), and SuperH x86(64). T2 is an increasingly popular choice for embedded systems and virtualization. It also still supports the Sony PS3, Sgi, Sun and HP workstations, as well as the latest ARM64 and RISCV64 architectures.

The release contains a total of 5,140 changesets, including approximately 5,314 package updates, 564 issues fixed, 317 packages or features added and 163 removed, and around 53 improvements. Usually most packages are up-to-date, including Linux 6.8, GCC 13, LLVM/Clang 18, as well as the latest version of X.org, Mesa, Firefox, Rust, KDE 6 and GNOME 46!

More information, source and binary distribution are open source and free at T2 SDE.

Tobias Mann reports via The Register: Canadian systems builder 45 Drives is perhaps best known for the dense multi-drive storage systems employed by the likes of Backblaze and others, but over the last year the biz has expanded its line-up to virtualization kit, and now low-power clients and workstations aimed at enterprises and home enthusiasts alike. 45 Drives' Home Client marks a departure from the relatively large rack-mount chassis it normally builds. Founder Doug Milburn told The Register the mini PC is something of a passion project that was born out of a desire to build a better home theater PC.

Housed within a custom passively cooled chassis built in-house by 45 Drive's parent company Protocase, is a quad-core, non-hyperthreaded Intel Alder Lake-generation N97 processor capable of boosting to 3.6GHz, your choice of either 8GB or 16GB of memory, and 250GB of flash storage. The decision to go with a 12-gen N-series was motivated in part by 45 Drives' internal workloads, Milburn explains, adding that to run PowerPoint or Salesforce just doesn't require that much horsepower. However, 45 Drives doesn't just see this as a low-power PC. Despite its name, the box will be sold under both its enterprise and home brands. In home lab environments, these small form factor x86 and Arm PCs have become incredibly popular for everything from lightweight virtualization and container hosts to firewalls and routers. [...]

In terms of software, 45 Drives says it will offer a number of operating system images for customers to choose from at the time of purchase, and Linux will be a first-class citizen on these devices. It's safe to say that Milburn isn't a big fan of Microsoft these days. "We run many hundreds of Microsoft workstations here, but we're kind of moving away from it," he said. "With Microsoft, it's a control thing; it's forced updates; it's a way of life with them." Milburn also isn't a fan of Microsoft's registration requirements and online telemetry. "We want control over what all our computers do. We want no traffic on our network that's out of here," he said. As a result, Milburn says 45 Drives is increasingly relying on Linux, and that not only applies to its internal machines but its products as well. Having said that, we're told that 45 Drives recognizes that Linux may not be appropriate for everyone and will offer Windows licenses at an additional cost. And, these both being x86 machines, there's nothing stopping you from loading your preferred distro or operating system on them after they've shipped. These workstations aren't exactly cheap. They start at $1,099 without the dedicated GPU. "The HL15 will set you back $799-$910 for the bare chassis if you opted for the PSU or not," adds The Register. "Meanwhile, a pre-configured system would run you $1,999 before factoring in drives."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: In a Monday post, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan restated his belief that VMware's portfolio was too complex, and too poorly integrated, for the virtualization giant to represent true competition for hyperscale clouds. Broadcom's injection of R&D cash, he insisted, will see VMware's flagship Cloud Foundation suite evolve to become more powerful and easy to operate. He also admitted that customers aren't enjoying the ride. "As we roll out this strategy, we continue to learn from our customers on how best to prepare them for success by ensuring they always have the transition time and support they need," he wrote. "In particular, the subscription pricing model does involve a change in the timing of customers' expenditures and the balance of those expenditures between capital and operating spending."

Customers also told Tan that "fast-moving change may require more time, so we have given support extensions to many customers who came up for renewal while these changes were rolling out." That's one of the changes -- Broadcom has previously not publicly suggested such extensions would be possible. "We have always been and remain ready to work with our customers on their specific concerns," Tan wrote. The other change is providing some ongoing security patches for VMware customers who persist with their perpetual licenses instead of shifting to Broadcom's subs. "We are announcing free access to zero-day security patches for supported versions of vSphere, and we'll add other VMware products over time," Tan wrote, describing the measure as aimed at ensuring that customers "whose maintenance and support contracts have expired and choose to not continue on one of our subscription offerings." The change means such customers "are able to use perpetual licenses in a safe and secure fashion."

Microsoft and Quantinuum today announced a major breakthrough in quantum error correction. Using Quantinuum's ion-trap hardware and Microsoft's new qubit-virtualization system, the team was able to run more than 14,000 experiments without a single error. From a report: This new system also allowed the team to check the logical qubits and correct any errors it encountered without destroying the logical qubits. This, the two companies say, has now moved the state-of-the-art of quantum computing out of what has typically been dubbed the era of Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) computers.

"Noisy" because even the smallest changes in the environment can lead a quantum system to essentially become random (or "decohere"), and "intermediate scale" because the current generation of quantum computers is still limited to just over a thousand qubits at best. A qubit is the fundamental unit of computing in quantum systems, analogous to a bit in a classic computer, but each qubit can be in multiple states at the same time and doesn't fall into a specific position until measured, which underlies the potential of quantum to deliver a huge leap in computing power.

It doesn't matter how many qubits you have, though, if you barely have time to run a basic algorithm before the system becomes too noisy to get a useful result -- or any result at all. Combining several different techniques, the team was able to run thousands of experiments with virtually no errors. That involved quite a bit of preparation and pre-selecting systems that already looked to be in good shape for a successful run, but still, that's a massive improvement from where the industry was just a short while ago. Further reading: Microsoft blog.

Lyle Smith reports via StorageReview.com: Proxmox has introduced a new import wizard for Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE), aiming to simplify the migration process for importing VMware ESXi VMs. This new feature comes at an important time in the industry, as it aims to ease the transition for these organizations looking to move away from VMware's vSphere due to high renewal costs.

The new import wizard is integrated into Proxmox VE's existing storage plugin system, allowing for direct integration into the platform's API and web-based user interface. It offers users the ability to import VMware ESXi VMs in their entirety, translating most of the original VM's configuration settings to Proxmox VE's configuration model (all while minimizing downtime). Currently, the import wizard is in a technical preview state, having been added during the Proxmox VE 8.2 development cycle. Although it is still under active development, early reports suggest the wizard is stable and holds considerable promise for future enhancements, including the planned addition of support for other import sources like OVF/OVA files. [...]

This tool represents Proxmox's commitment to providing accessible, open-source virtualization solutions. By leveraging the official ESXi API and implementing a user space filesystem with optimized read-ahead caching in Rust (a safe, fast, and modern programming language ideal for system-level tasks), Proxmox aims to ensure that this new feature can be integrated smoothly into its broader ecosystem.

couchslug shares a report from ITPro: A European cloud trade body has called for an investigation into Broadcom amid concerns over changes it has made to VMware licensing structures. The Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) consortium called on regulatory and legislative bodies across Europe to investigate the changes Broadcom has made to the VMware operating model, which it says will "decimate" the region's cloud infrastructure. "CISPE calls upon regulators, legislators and courts across Europe to swiftly scrutinize the actions of Broadcom in unilaterally canceling license terms for essential virtualization software," the trade body said in a statement. Since acquiring VMware in November 2023, Broadcom has embarked on a comprehensive overhaul of software licensing at the firm, which has drawn widespread criticism from customers. Broadcom stated it would continue to support customers under a perpetual licensing agreement for the period defined in the contract, but following this customers would need to exchange any remaining licenses for subscription-based products. This has left both cloud service vendors and customers in limbo, according to CISPE, without any solid information on how, when, or if they will be able to license VMware products essential for their operations from April 2024. Moreover, even if they are able to relicense the VMware software, a number of customers reported dramatic price hikes of as much as 12 times.

CISPE's characterisation of the move was far less charitable, arguing Broadcom is using VMware's market dominance, controlling almost 45% of the virtualization market, to charge exorbitant rents from cloud providers. Several CISPE members admitted that without the ability to license VMware products they will be unable to operate and will go bankrupt, with some stating that over 75% of their revenue depends on VMware virtualization tech. Members added that they often received termination notices late, if at all, with short notice periods that spanned just a few weeks. In addition, CISPE also complained about the decision to remove hundreds of products without any notice, and re-bundle the outstanding products under new prohibitive contract terms, despite there being no changes to the products themselves. Francisco Mingorance, secretary general of CISPE, said the changes will hurt both European customers and cloud service providers by increasing costs and reducing choice. At a time when our members are moving to support the requirements for switching and portability between cloud services outlined in the Data Act, Broadcom is holding the sector to ransom by leveraging VMware's dominance of the virtualization sector to enforce unfair license terms and extract unfair rents from European cloud customers," Mingorance said.

CISPE noted that for some cloud sector applications that require certifications by software or service providers, VMware products are the only viable option. As such, the association called for Broadcom to be recognized as a designated gatekeeper under the terms of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that came into force on March 7, 2024. Mingorance argued Broadcom's moves will only further restrict an already limited set of options for cloud providers in Europe, warning that Broadcom has a dangerous degree of control over the region's digital ecosystems. "As well as inflicting financial damage on the European digital economy, these actions will decimate Europe's independent cloud infrastructure sector and further reduce the diversity of choice for customers," he explained. "Dominant software providers, in any sector from productivity software to virtualization, must not be allowed to wield life or death power over Europe's digital ecosystems."

In a blog post Thursday, Broadcom CEO and President Hock Tan acknowledged the discomfort VMware customers and partners have experienced after the sweeping changes that Broadcom has instituted since it acquired the company nearly four months ago. "Of course, we recognize that this level of change has understandably created some unease among our customers and partners," writes Tan. "But all of these moves have been with the goals of innovating faster, meeting our customers' needs more effectively, and making it easier to do business with us." Ars Technica reports: Tan believes that the changes will ultimately "provide greater profitability and improved market opportunities" for channel partners. However, many IT solution provider businesses that were working with VMware have already been disrupted. For example, after buying VMware, Broadcom took over the top 2,000 VMware accounts from VMware channel partners. In a March earnings call, Tan said that Broadcom has been focused on upselling those customers. He also said Broadcom expects VMware revenue to grow double-digits quarter over quarter for the rest of the fiscal year. [...]

In his blog post, Tan defended the subscription-only licensing model, calling it "the industry standard." He said VMware started accelerating its transition to this strategy in 2019, (which is before Broadcom bought VMware). He also linked to a February blog post from VMware's Prashanth Shenoy, VP of product and technical marketing for the Cloud, Infrastructure, Platforms, and Solutions group at VMware, that also noted acquisition-related "concerns" but claimed the evolution would be fiscally prudent.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is already testing Windows 11 24H2, this fall's big new Windows release. The company has already demonstrated a few new features, like 80Gbps USB4 support and Sudo for Windows, and the new version could also give a significant refresh to the Windows installer for the first time since the Windows Vista days. But there's one big update you might not notice at all. Late last week, Microsoft released "servicing updates" with no new features to Windows Insiders in the Dev and Canary channels. The updates were "designed to test [Microsoft's] servicing pipeline for Windows 11." It's pretty common for Insiders to get these kinds of updates-that-exist-only-to-test-the-update-process, but the twist here is that PCs with Virtualization Based Security (VBS) enabled could apply the update without rebooting.

Sources speaking to Windows Central say this isn't a fluke -- Microsoft reportedly intends to use a Windows Server feature called hotpatching to deliver more Windows 11 security updates without requiring a reboot, making it easier to stay up to date without disrupting whatever you're doing. You'll still need to reboot "every few months" -- Microsoft's documentation says a reboot is needed roughly once every three months, though it can happen more often than that for unanticipated zero-day patches and others that can't be fixed via hotpatching. The Arm versions of Windows 11 also won't get the feature for another year or so, according to Windows Central.

stikves writes: Today, Broadcom announced immediate end of ESXi availability. ESXi has been an important tool for many "homelab" enthusiasts -- offering simple bare metal virtualization for small setups. Unfortunately they don't offer a replacement, except for paid subscription services.

The Wall Street Journal reports: Moves by Broadcom to shore up its $69 billion VMware acquisition, completed in November, include a streamlining of product bundles and new billing models — efforts in line with the chip giant's past acquisitions, but not necessarily welcomed by all of VMware's customers... Broadcom has also recently laid off at least hundreds of VMware workers, disclosures from the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification show....

VMware has approximately 330,000 customers, according to the company. Chief information officers say they are closely monitoring what comes next.

"Any CIO that's not taking stock of what they have and mentally considering alternatives and monitoring what else is out there is probably not doing their job," said Jay Ferro, executive vice president and chief information, technology and product officer at clinical research data-management company Clario. All these changes, plus past remarks by Broadcom that its go-to-market strategy is to focus completely on the needs and priorities of its top 600 customers, has left some CIOs rethinking the relationship. Price increases and degrading levels of support are among their biggest concerns. "I'm not one of their top, probably 600 customers, so they've been very clear to me where I fit in that pecking order," said Todd Florence, CIO of trucking company Estes Express Lines. Florence said he's started looking into alternatives. "It certainly doesn't make you feel good, like you're going to get lots of support going forward...."

Goya Foods CIO Suvajit Basu said he is thinking about how to reduce the food company's reliance on VMware as the sole and longtime dominant provider of virtualization for the data center. "They're going to increase their prices or change their licensing so the customer pays more," he said. "And I think this is starting to hit us right now...." Forrester estimates that in 2024, 20% of VMware customers will begin the process of exiting VMware in favor of alternatives.
On the other hand, a group VP at market researcher IDC tells the Journal that on the upside, now VMware and Broadcom will have to engage more actively with customers on the value of new produces included in their bundles...