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<\/p>\n\u2018[Broadcom is] focused on their largest customers, and inevitably, probably their most profitable customers. They\u2019ve done things like raise the minimum license count. And their argument has been, \u2018Well, everybody uses more cores than that.\u2019 But that\u2019s not true, right? And especially if you look at the edge where you might use a fourth of that or something,\u2019 says Scale Computing CEO Jeff Ready.<\/p>\n
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Scale Computing personnel and channel partners used last week\u2019s Scale Computing Platform\/\/2025 conference<\/a> in Las Vegas to reflect what they told CRN in many conversations were negative reactions by partners and customers alike to changes Broadcom made to VMware programs and licensing.<\/p>\n Not that Scale Computing was complaining. The company in several presentations said changes at VMware led to a significant increase in Scale\u2019s TAM, or total addressable market. Broadcom has declined to respond to CRN\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Scale Computing CEO Jeff Ready was actually enthusiastic about the opportunity the Indianapolis-based company feels the alleged customer and partner shift away from VMware presents.<\/p>\n [Related: Scale Computing CEO: Making Edge Computing An \u2018App Store\u2019 For Business IT<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201c[VMware has] focused on their largest customers, and inevitably, probably their most profitable customers,\u201d Ready told CRN. \u201cThey\u2019ve done things like raise the minimum license count. And their argument has been, \u2018Well, everybody uses more cores than that.\u2019 But that\u2019s not true, right? And especially if you look at the edge where you might use a fourth of that or something. These could be very tiny deployments. So there\u2019s a disenfranchised segment from that.\u201d<\/p>\n Ready also said that another VMware and Scale Computing competitor, Nutanix, has some technology and market overlap with his company.<\/p>\n \u201cI think as you look at our go-forward product roadmap, our concept of streamlining application creation and delivery out to the edge is quite different than what you have with Nutanix,\u201d he said. \u201cThat said, clearly both companies are benefiting from the Broadcom dynamic.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot going on with HCI, Nutanix, VMware, and Scale Computing. To learn more about how they tie together, read what Ready had to say in this Q&A, which was lightly edited for clarity.<\/p>\n Broadcom acquired VMware<\/a>, your top competitor, in December of 2023. How have things at Scale Computing changed in the last six months as a result of that acquisition?<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s a couple of things. One, we continue to see Broadcom make changes to VMware in line with what they\u2019ve always said, but still adversely affect certain customers. They\u2019re focused on their largest customers, and inevitably, probably their most profitable customers. They\u2019ve done things like raise the minimum license count. And their argument has been, \u2018Well, everybody uses more cores than that.\u2019 But that\u2019s not true, right? And especially if you look at the edge where you might use a fourth of that or something. These could be very tiny deployments. So there\u2019s a disenfranchised segment from that, and we\u2019ve seen it. Customers who previously thought, \u2018Well, maybe I\u2019ll ride it out with VMware,\u2019 suddenly say, \u2018Oh, well, maybe not.\u2019<\/p>\n The other thing is continued churn among the channel partners who support those customers. I would say channel partners who support any customers using VMware have been affected in some way, but the channel partners who support midsized customers are the most adversely affected because the pricing changed a lot for those customers. And, despite the occasional language to the contrary, Broadcom has maintained that channel partners have to sign up for certain minimums which are often more than those channel partners do in aggregate across all products. If you\u2019re a small regional or local partner, a $2 million VMware minimum commitment? You can\u2019t do that. The result for Scale has been not only an increasing number of end users deploying on Scale, but also a tremendous number of new partners, 1000-plus, joining us over the last six months. It\u2019s a lot of growth in partners, and we do expect that to continue to accelerate.<\/p>\n How does that tie into Scale Computing\u2019s expanded relationship with data resilience vendor Veeam<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the benefits of our partnership with Veeam is it makes migrating to Scale from VMware as simple as just restoring your backup. If you back it up on VMware, you just restore it to Scale and you\u2019re done. \u2026<\/p>\n Veeam, like Scale, serves customers of all shapes and sizes, but they have particular strength in midsize accounts, SMB and midmarket, often smaller accounts than where Scale has played. Scale also has a lot of midmarket strength. It\u2019s very natural that partners who maybe were selling Scale and wish they could sell Veeam but couldn\u2019t in the past now can. It might be a Scale partner who now can sell Veeam, or a Veeam partner who said, \u2018Well, what the heck am I going to do about VMware?\u2019 and now can sell Scale. We\u2019re doing that. We\u2019re announcing some joint bundles together so one partner can buy the whole thing. We\u2019re aligning licensing between the companies so that if you buy, for example, a 10-pack license from Veeam, there\u2019s a matching license from Scale.<\/p>\n Outside of VMware, your other biggest competitor is Nutanix, which recently held its Nutanix Next conference<\/a>. What is your competitive dynamic versus Nutanix?<\/strong><\/p>\n There was a time when the companies were very similar in terms of the markets we\u2019re going after, but we\u2019ve evolved differently, though. So for all the talk we\u2019ve had here about edge computing and these smaller deployments, Nutanix talks about multi-cloud and that sort of a thing. Can they do some edge stuff? Sure. Can we do some multi-cloud stuff? Sure. There\u2019s some overlap in the middle, but we are focused on different areas. And I think as you look at our go-forward product roadmap, our concept of streamlining application creation and delivery out to the edge is quite different than what you have with Nutanix. That said, clearly both companies are benefiting from the Broadcom dynamic. I don\u2019t have any insights into Nutanix\u2019s numbers, but I would be shocked if they\u2019re not signing up lots of channel partners, too. I\u2019m sure they talked about it at their show. We both benefit from that. Industry guys like Gartner say that hyperconvergence is the number one alternative to traditional VMware. And we both have made moves around support for external storage. Nutanix made a big deal about its support for Dell PowerFlex<\/a>. We\u2019ve supported external SANs forever. It\u2019s actually fairly common for a customer to run a mix of hyperconvergence and external storage depending on their use case. \u2026<\/p>\n The video surveillance system at Resorts World, where the Scale Computing conference was held, all runs on Scale. It\u2019s a classic example where you ingest video in high demand, and that\u2019s going to run on the HCI stack, but for archival of that video, you\u2019re going to connect external storage to the same platform. People often mistakenly think that it\u2019s one or the other. It\u2019s either HCI or traditional SAN. And that\u2019s not the case. I don\u2019t know enough about Nutanix to say maybe it was the case with them and that changed. But we\u2019ve always had this mixed environment. Most customers typically only have a small number of applications that actually need a SAN. They may need Pure Storage or something like that for some high-performance application that must have that. Or they need cheap bits of cheap SAN, cheap storage, and they can use the HCI for most of it. So a mixed environment. Very commonly, customers are going to use that and use the cloud at the same time. Our ultimate goal really is to abstract away all of the complexity of managing infrastructure so that all the IT team needs to think about is applications and not where they run. They might run in the cloud, the data center, the edge. Is it a virtual machine? Is it a container? These are questions people ask themselves today. Our objective is to get to the point where you\u2019re not asking those questions anymore.<\/p>\n ![\"\"](\".\/media_1d1519242e7ec3ac01ff0f961d52d1f1533bea4d8.png?width=750&format=png&optimize=medium\")
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