Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) and VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW) today (Nov 22) announced that they have received all required regulatory approvals and intend to close Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware.
Broadcom has received legal merger clearance in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, Israel, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and foreign investment control clearance in all necessary jurisdictions. There is no legal impediment to closing under U.S. merger regulations.
Broadcom Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO), a Delaware corporation headquartered in San Jose, CA, is a global technology leader that designs, develops and supplies a broad range of semiconductor and infrastructure software solutions. Broadcom’s category-leading product portfolio serves critical markets including data center, networking, enterprise software, broadband, wireless, storage and industrial.
The USD69 billion acquisition of cloud computing firm VMWare (VMW.N) on Wednesday will finalise one of the biggest takeover deals in the technology industry that was closely being scrutinized by regulators globally.
The chipmaker has now received all regulatory approvals for the purchase after China approved the acquisition with additional restrictive conditions earlier on Tuesday, it said.
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is a leading provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control.
Nutanix President and CEO Rajiv Ramaswami, on the acquisition, said: “VMware has historically been an innovative tech leader, but this acquisition changes the relationship that customers will have with the company going forward. If you look at its history, Broadcom’s whole business model has been to maximize acquired assets in two to three years.
VMware customers will feel this. From their customers to their employees, we’re hearing concerns over these changes and we’re the best option for customers looking to reduce their dependence on VMware.”
Meanwhile, Dave Raffo, Senior Analyst, The Futurum Group said: “There is a lot of anxiety about the Broadcom-VMware acquisition around pricing, support and other issues. Nutanix AHV is one hypervisor option that VMware customers have. AHV has been out there for years with most Nutanix customers already using it, many of them alongside VMware ESXi. That means many VMware customers are already familiar with AHV, and it runs the same HCI workloads.”
From a customer’s (about switching to VMware), Bret Snyder, Senior Server Engineer at Ruffalo Noel Levitz said, “After working with it for just a few days, I told my colleagues that Nutanix works the way that VMware should,” while James Bishop, Director, Skye Cloud added: “There were big savings to be made by switching from the consumption model employed by VMware to the license-free Nutanix AHV hypervisor.”
