A trade association of cloud service providers (CSPs) filed an antitrust complaint today with the European Union’s European Commission (EC) over Broadcom’s shuttering of VMware’s CSP partner program this year. Since Broadcom bought VMware, it has drastically cut the number of channel partners VMware works with, a shift that began with the elimination of VMware’s partner program. Broadcom replaced the program with an invite-only alternative that favors larger partners working with enterprise-sized clients rather than small-to-medium-sized businesses. There are even fewer CSP partners working with VMware today. Broadcom introduced a requirement that CSP partners operate at least 3,500 cores, rendering hundreds of CSPs ineligible for partnership. Before Broadcom bought VMware, the virtualization company had over 4,000 CSP partners, per a February 2024 report from The Register. Today, VMware reportedly has 19 CSP partners in the US and about nine in the United Kingdom, The Register reported. In January, Broadcom terminated VMware’s CSP program in Europe, prompting the antitrust complaint CISPE filed today. The complaint asks the EC to stop Broadcom from killing the program, which is still honoring transactions until March 31. CISE is urging the EC to impose an interim measure requiring Broadcom to reopen the CSP partner program, reinstate displaced partners, and prevent Broadcom from retaliating against them.
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