VMware Cloud Marketing Head: Broadcom Changes Mean Business ‘Will Only Get Better’

The marketing head of VMware Cloud Foundation is seeking to reassure customers and partners that all the changes enacted by Broadcom mean business “will only get better.”

“Good business hygiene is never easy,” Prashanth Shenoy, head of VMware’s marketing group for cloud platform, infrastructure and solutions, wrote in a blog this week. “When you acquire a company, you look at everything.”

Shenoy was referring to the industry uproar that has arisen in the months after Broadcom closed the $61 billion purchase of VMware. In short, Broadcom has laid off thousands of VMware staff; “simplified” the VMware portfolio, including VMware Cloud Foundation; terminated the VMware partner program before inviting “active” partners to join Broadcom Advantage; and taken the top 2,000 VMware accounts out of partners’ hands and put them onto direct sales teams.

VMware's Prashanth Shenoy

That last move, especially, has sparked a wave of opportunity for smaller cloud vendors. A number of companies have emerged to showcase their viability as VMware replacements. And that timing could prove auspicious. A recent Candafero poll shows that 50% of VMware partners “urgently want to dump Broadcom,” as Jay McBain, chief analyst at Canalys, which runs the online, partner-only Candafero community, said in January. (Canalys is a Channel Futures sister company.)

As a result of all that, VMware’s reputation has taken a hit. Shenoy, for his part, aimed to shed some light on Broadcom’s strategy around VMware, which has turned itself into a multicloud provider. See the slideshow above to learn more about what Shenoy had to say to customers and channel partners.