back to article VMware says vSphere in decline, new multi-cloud plan will ensure growth

VMware is setting itself up for life after vSphere, outlining a new multi-cloud strategy and insisting its newer products are all growing nicely. It also said it will scale back its vCloud Air cloud service, and fire about 800 staff as it moves people into areas likely to fuel growth. VMware execs used today's Q4 2015 and FY …

  1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Price

    The declining use of vSphere would have nothing to do with its price and there being cheaper (or even free!) alternatives, would it?

    1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

      Re: Price

      Nothing either to do with the shitty Flash-based admin and needs a version a fractional point beyond the last one Adobe supply for Linux, perhaps?

      Or the changing command line tools so you go up a version and past stuff won't work as no muppet thought of good backwards comparability?

      Or the just-revealed decision to sack the original virtulisation developers and find cheaper alternatives (if at all)?

      1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

        @Paul Crawford Re: Price

        I know it doesn't fix all the problems, but VMWare's Host Client Interface is pure HTML/Javascript and is getting better with every version.

        1. Big Wiggle

          Re: @Paul Crawford Price

          The Host Client Interface is supposedly going to become the vCenter interface in the near future.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Price

        "The declining use of vSphere would have nothing to do with its price"

        Compared to Hyper-V Server being completely free, yep, I think so too.

        "Nothing either to do with the shitty Flash-based admin "

        Powershell works just fine if you don't need a GUI.

    2. dsellens

      Re: Price

      Yes and no. The primary factor is not cost, it is the increasing size (number of cores) in new Processors. Companies are replacing 6-core procs with larger ones and consolidating the size of their datacenters instead of adding new machines. We recently replaced the 3 servers at one of our customer sites with 3 newer (still used) machines instead of adding a 4th machine to their cluster and saved them money. Note that they already owned the fourth machine that would have only required a memory upgrade. So yes, it was price as well as technology that drove this.

      Second, the basic virtualization market is nearing saturation. There just isn't that much growth left. Many companies are 100% or nearly 100% virtualized and will not be buying any new licenses. And due to the factors above, may actually be cutting licenses in future years.

      On the price side though, I am just about convinced that VMware is moving to abandon the small business customers that don't need their high-priced NSX, VSAN, and Hybrid products. Their continued push to the Linux based vCenter appliance will further drive customers to Hyper-V. There a huge number of small businesses out there that do not have any Linux expertise and are not about to hang the entire future of their business on something that they have no ability to support. They will go to Hyper-V long before they will even consider going to the vCenter appliance. And with Microsoft putting network and storage virtualization along with hybrid features right into Windows, VMware is looking at huge competition at the small end of the market where what they are selling for their high dollars are not needed. Windows 2012r2 was a big move, 2016 moves the bar forward again. Even small businesses with only 3 or 4 hosts are already buying Windows Datacenter to allow them unlimited Windows servers, so they are already paying for all the Hyper-V features. By this time next year, when VMware maintenance costs come due, there will be more and more people looking and Hyper-V.

  2. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    "VMware's execs were at pains to point out that those numbers look even better when one considers that its Russian, Brazilian and Chinese business have sunk nastily due to economic conditions, and that it paid $75.5m to settle a price-fiddling dispute with the US government."

    Really? If you had sold more stuff than you did, revenue (and maybe profits) would be higher than it is? Why, that's economic genius, that is!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    vCloud Airhead

    I have had a vCloud Air account for over a year. I get maintenance emails nearly every day, sometimes several. Most indicate that the control panel will be unavailable during the duration of the "maintenance", which has unknown duration in most cases. Enterprise ready? I think not. Public cloud is hard. Just ask HP. I have an account there as well. Soon to be HAD an account there. VMWare's problems are in the mirror staring straight back at them. I feel sorry for the employees. The next X years are going to be brutal ....

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