Opinion If you're a tech company marketing manager writing white papers, you'll love a juicy pull quote. That's where a client says something so lovely about you, you can pull it out of the main text and reprint it in a big font in the middle of the page.
"VMware is essential for the operations of Tesco's business and its ability to supply groceries" is a great candidate from 2019.
Broadcom's answer to VMware pricing outrage: You're using it wrong READ MORE
Or it would be, if it wasn't followed by accusations of massive contractual misbehavior threatening the client, and requests for many millions of dollars in damages – and rising. What looks great as marketing blurb isn't so hot on a court filing.
What a filing it is, too. Tesco is the UK's biggest supermarket chain by revenue, with around 40,000 server workloads keeping the ship afloat. Before Broadcom swallowed VMware, Tesco bought perpetual licenses and support that could run to 2030. Broadcom, Tesco claims, is refusing to honor the support contracts until Tesco switches to new licenses. This, it is further claimed, puts the retail giant at risk of being unable to operate.
Thus, Tesco is looking for damages of £100 million and rising from Broadcom, VMware, and the somewhat unfortunate reseller Computacenter. It's hard to feel sorry for a reseller. That's how bad this is.
Assuming Tesco's claims are true, this is extortion. Running an enterprise on unsupported software, while not exactly unknown, is corporate malpractice. Running unsupported software on which your entire business depends is nigh on suicidal. But who's holding the gun here?
Pulling patches, support, and upgrades that you are contractually obliged to provide, while demanding more money for a worse deal, doesn't look like being a good partner. It looks like running a protection racket. It looks like extortion. Nice multibillion business you've got there, man. Shame if anything, y'know, happened to it.
Can we assume Tesco is entirely accurate in its claims? Not until the case is heard, but the circumstantial evidence is there. The affair is in danger of turning into a class action lawsuit. The UK company is joining Siemens and AT&T.
Perhaps Broadcom has never lost similar cases? Um, no. Perhaps Broadcom is putting up a spirited public defense, rather than blaming its clients for doing it wrong? Um, no. Surely, it couldn't be so crass as to say its new licensing policy is not only blameless but very popular because it's bringing in so much more money, man, rather than 1,000-percent-plus price hikes? It is. All these stories are from just three months this year.
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