[p_l]

Microsoft never cut off the long tail.

I'd argue they explicitly do the opposite. And that's why they could take back clients who went with alternatives - because they have a strategy where they can offer something from small office to multinational corporation, and have tailored packages and strategies at all levels.

And the problem with VMware is that to reach the scale where they are going to play ball, you're probably going to have the parts integrated already. Not a transition from small scale stuff where VMware integrated platform used to turn heads as migration path. Hell, at the scale Broadcom wants to only play there's no migration tooling available - and most is being built now to migrate away.

When you reach the scale Broadcom wants to focus on, you're going to have significant infrastructure spend already - and the CIO might get asked heavy questions regarding migration cost and time.

Frankly speaking, Broadcom strategy is one that does not admit new clients.