Broadcom Says It Put "Too Big a Focus" on VCF as VMware Seeks to Regain SMB Trust

Broadcom has acknowledged that it placed "too big a focus on VCF," or VMware Cloud Foundation, according to a report from Ars Technica examining the company's efforts to address concerns among small and midsize business (SMB) customers.

The admission comes amid ongoing scrutiny of how Broadcom has managed VMware since acquiring the virtualization company. The Ars Technica report frames the core issue facing VMware not as a lack of product capability, but as an erosion of trust with smaller customers, stating that "trust, not features, is the real deficit."

VMware Cloud Foundation is Broadcom's flagship private cloud platform, which bundles multiple VMware products into an integrated software stack. Since the acquisition, Broadcom has restructured VMware's licensing and packaging around VCF-centric offerings, a shift that has drawn criticism from customers, particularly smaller organizations that previously relied on standalone or perpetual licensing options.

According to the report, Broadcom is now attempting to appease SMB customers, though specific details of the company's remedial steps were not fully outlined in the available excerpt of the report.

Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware in late 2023 for approximately $61 billion, and has since overhauled the company's go-to-market strategy, moving away from perpetual license sales toward subscription-based models built around bundled product suites like VCF. The changes have been a source of friction with segments of VMware's customer base, according to industry reporting.

Further details on Broadcom's specific plans to address SMB concerns were not available in the source material reviewed for this report.