Ingram Micro joins the list of companies that is tired of dealing with Broadcom’s handling of the VMware acquisition, saying it will no longer do business with the company.

Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware in November 2023, and immediately began raising prices and ending perpetual licensing. In some cases, the price hikes bordered on the absurd, with AT&T accusing the company of trying to raise prices by 1,050% and the Beeks Group migrating away from VMware after Broadcom hit it with a 10x price increase.

According to The Register, distribution giant Ingram Micro has had enough, saying it will no longer work with Broadcom after negotiations between the two companies broke down.

“We were unable to reach an agreement with Broadcom that would help our customers deliver the best technology outcomes now and in the future while providing an appropriate shareholder return,” a spokesperson told the outlet.

As a result, from “early January 2025, Ingram Micro will no longer be doing business with Broadcom and have limited engagement with VMware in select regions.”

“For us and the more than 1,500 vendors and 161,000 customers we work with, the future of business is focused on transforming relationships, not just transacting sales,” the spokesperson added.

Broadcom’s Changed Support Strategy to Blame

Prior to its acquisition, VMware’s teams handled support requests, giving customers the best possible experience. Broadcom changed that, however, dumping L1/L2 support on distribution partners. As users on a Reddit thread highlight, this resulted in Ingram and other partners suddenly having a support workloads dropped on them that they were ill-equipped to handle.

Remember that broadcom dumped the vmware support on partners like Ingram with no notice and no time to build up. If you buy direct it would be a different story, but support may vary. This is unfortunate in how broadcom handled.

My support for velocloud still goes direct to velocloud team and have gotten good to great support in timely fashion, like even 15min on a P2.

Reddit user Googol20

Can confirm. If you’re a commercial customer and your VAR sourced from Ingram as their preferred disti, Broadcom edict to Ingram under their new contract was to provide L1/L2 support for those customers. Other redditors are right- they had almost no time to build and ramp up a tech support org for that vendor. Broadcom doesn’t care if the customer experience sucks. They’re not going to change anything unless it makes them more money. Price increases rumored to be coming in this new fiscal year for BC also. We are actively looking for alternatives now with a quickness as Broadcom itself is turning into a risk our leadership is getting tired of dealing with.

Reddit user h0l0type

If what Reddit users are reporting is true, it’s little wonder that Ingram decided to stop working with Broadcom. After years of providing direct support to customers, it would seem to be incredibly opportunistic and short-sighted for Broadcom to suddenly dump a large portion of that support on distribution partners, let alone doing so without giving them time to properly build up the necessary infrastructure.

Even more to the point, rarely will a distribution partner have the same level of expertise as the company making the product. As a result, even with the necessary infrastructure in place, it’s unlikely distribution partners will be able to provide the same level of support VMware was known for.

Broadcom Is Confirming Critics’ Pre-Acquisition Fears

Broadcom’s actions—as evidenced by it’s interactions with AT&T, Beeks Group, and Ingram Micro—are confirming the worst fears critics had prior to the acquisition.

Broadcom has a reputation in the tech industry for ruthless efficiency in driving profit. The company’s operating margin, at roughly 61%, far exceeds many other companies, including other companies known for being highly profitable, such as Oracle with 47% margins.

As a result, there was a tremendous amount of angst leading up to the acquisition, both inside and outside the company.

“It’s like a sinking ship and we’re being asked to row until we go under,” one VMware engineer said at the time, estimating that half of his work acquaintances are looking for other jobs. “Do I hang out here and the boat’s probably going to sink? Or do I jump ship because other people are?”

“People feel betrayed,” added another VMware engineer. “For my team of 10 I know four of us are actively interviewing.” Another one said that “the only thing keeping many people here is the specter of a recession.”

In the wake of the acquisition, European cloud organization CISPE appealed to regulators to reign in Broadcom’s price hikes and licensing changes, saying its “brutal” tactics would “decimate” Europe’s independent cloud companies and infrastructure.

“At a time when our members are moving to support the requirements for switching and portability between cloud services outlined in the Data Act, Broadcom is holding the sector to ransom by leveraging VMware’s dominance of the virtualisation sector to enforce unfair licence terms and extract unfair rents from European cloud customers,” said Francisco Mingorance, secretary general of CISPE. “These changes harm European customers and cloud service providers, increasing costs and reducing choice.”

“As well as inflicting financial damage on the European digital economy, these actions will decimate Europe’s independent cloud infrastructure sector and further reduce the diversity of choice for customers. Dominant software providers, in any sector from productivity software to virtualisation, must not be allowed to wield life or death power over Europe’s digital ecosystems,” Mingorance added.

Hopefully, Ingram Micro will not be the last company to decide it is done with VMware and Broadcom. If enough large companies and partners abandon the platform, it may just force Broadcom to reconsider its actions.