CISPE responds to minor changes to VMware’s licensing policy under Broadcom following previous criticism. In fact, Broadcom wouldn’t solve anything at all and would be guilty of anti-cloud practices akin to extortion.

CISPE, the advocacy group for cloud infrastructure providers in Europe, fires another shot at Broadcom. This time, CISPE takes a closer look at Broadcom’s response to previous criticism. Vendors called for a formal investigation into Broadcom’s practices since the VMware acquisition in late March, and Broadcom responded with a slightly modified licensing policy. For example, perpetual license holders would continue to receive important security updates.

In a new blog post, CISPE clarifies: “It remains offensive to offer zero-day patches to existing perpetual licenses due to the restrictions.” In fact, Broadcom promises nothing more than that it will only fix critical software bugs in its products if the customer opts out does not opt ​​for the new subscription model. This looks a lot like blackmail.”

Anticloud

CISPE cites some well-known issues to argue that Broadcom has an anti-competitive anti-cloud policy. For example, Broadcom undermines any flexibility by making licenses rigid, requiring them to decide three years in advance what they want to use and pay for it immediately.

The providers point out that a subscription model in itself is not a problem, but this implementation, in which all types of services are forcibly bundled, leads to enormous price increases for customers.

Furthermore, CISPE denounces that Broadcom lectures customers and continues to tell them what they need despite all evidence to the contrary. According to CISPE, Broadcom is willfully blind to what is happening in the real world, and in practice prices are skyrocketing for customers by six, ten or even twelve times. The providers reiterate their call for a formal investigation by the European Commission.

Answer

Broadcom, meanwhile, responds almost cartoonishly to The Register with a statement that confirms all of CISPE’s criticisms: “Broadcom and VMware’s robust solutions create more choice and enable all types of order taking to accelerate innovation and solve their most complex technology challenges.” It sounds free of any form of allusion to the ongoing criticism of companies that experience the opposite.

“Our simplified offering at a significantly lower price is in response to customer feedback,” Broadcom continued. Belgian customers certainly won’t be, as they too have made their voices heard via the interest group Beltug in an open letter with words like “contempt” and “brutality”. ITdaily itself has also heard stories from readers about factors that have increased by a factor of ten, not decreased. In its response, Broadcom mentions an ongoing dialogue, although what we see is mostly a monologue.

You can read more about the Broadcom saga here. Are you a victim of a price increase yourself? Or have license costs just fallen in your company? Let us know via press@itdaily.be – anonymity guaranteed.