- Tesco to move 40,000 of its servers away from VMware
- Broadcom faces lawsuit from UK retailer, alleging ‘abusive conduct’
- HPE recently announced free licenses for affected customers
One of Britain’s largest supermarkets, Tesco, is set to migrate around 40,000 VMware servers, making it one of the largest publicly disclosed VMware migration projects since the acquisition of Broadcom.
The news comes as Tesco continues its legal action against Broadcom in the UK High Court, accusing the company of engaging in “abusive conduct”.
Tesco alleges that the company has refused to continue standalone support for VMware perpetual licenses and has been forced to purchase more expensive subscription packages.
Tesco says it has purchased perpetual licenses in 2021 with support and software updates until 2026, with the option to extend support for a further four years until the end of the decade.
However, due to changes imposed when Broadcom acquired VMware at the end of 2023, Tesco reportedly faced price increases of around 175%.
The company is now seeking more than £100 million in damages, but in a sign of its dissatisfaction with Broadcom, it is seeking to migrate now rather than wait for the outcome of the court case with a deadline of late 2027.
It has also had to hire third-party support providers to maintain its VMware environment, he says.
“In the face of Broadcom’s abusive conduct, and given the importance of virtualization and mainframe software and services to its business, Tesco has been forced to incur material costs to acquire alternative solutions with reduced functionality and to migrate to that software in a manner and within a timeframe that creates very significant risks to its business,” reads an excerpt from the document.
It’s unclear what Tesco’s next steps are in terms of finding an alternative, but the timing is notable. HPE announced this week that it would offer customers a free one-year license for its Morpheus VM Essentials alternative, plus a $1 license for the separate Zerto migration software.
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