VMware Explore 2025: Visitor numbers drop to a quarter; VMware for submarines

VMware [German]It's time for some news about VMware by Broadcom. VMware Explore 2025 has just taken place in the US. The number of visitors is said to have plummeted to "less than a quarter," and exhibitors stood around waiting in deserted halls. In addition, VMware by Broadcom has apparently adjusted its software license internally so that the product can also be used on submarines.

VMware Explore 2025 with declining visitor numbers

I had only vaguely noticed that VMware by Broadcom held its in-house exhibition Explore 2025 in Las Vegas from August 25 to 29, 2025. Previously held in Europe, Explore 2025 will apparently only take place in the USA. There isn't much about this event on the web – just a few party photos and recordings of sessions taken at Explore 2025.

But German IT news site heise published an extensive article Brutaler Absturz der VMware Explore (Brutal crash of VMware Explore) about this in-house exhibition. The key message: "the number of participants at VMware Explorer is said to have plummeted to less than a quarter." According to heise, between 2,500 and 5,000 people were present at the sprawling conference center of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. As a result, the event was characterized by deserted corridors and breakout sessions in rooms with a capacity far exceeding the number of attendees. The exhibition area is said to have been "yawningly empty."

And it was rumored that the "enthusiasm of the participants" was not exactly overwhelming. All of this is a consequence of the new business policy that has left its mark following Broadcom's acquisition of VMware. Partners were kicked out, customers were gagged with contracts and battered with huge price increases.

Laura Falko, responsible for Broadcom's global partner program, is quoted by heise as saying: "Partners who have clogged up our ecosystem have had their authorization revoked." She is referring to the process I discussed in my article VMware by Broadcom kicks small and medium-sized partners out of partner program. Small and medium-sized partners who made VMware big in the first place are being terminated and, with the above statement, kicked hard in the shins once again.

At the moment, VMware by Broadcom's sales are still going strong and the stock market is celebrating the developments. But customers are persistently annoyed and are trying to move away from the VMware VCF platform. And conference sponsors are faced with the dilemma that VMware by Broadcom is simply "pissing on everyone's shoes" – fired employees, angry customers, and brutally kicked VMware partners are just as toxic an environment for advertising as Elon Musk and his X platform.

The editorial team of the heise medium iX was apparently on site and spoke with sponsors such as Microsoft, Google Cloud, and AWS. They had provided substantial financial support for the in-house exhibition of the "competing-cooperating manufacturer" in the hope of making qualified customer contacts. Quote from heise: "In conversation with iX, these [sponsors] expressed their dismay at the lack of customer discussions."

The decision-makers at Veeam were probably smarter than AWS, Microsoft, and Google, as they stayed away from Explorer 2025. The heise article implies that Veeam is being "ungrateful to VMware," which made them big in the first place, but now won't even act as a sponsor. "Well, well," flashed through my mind.

We'll have to wait and see whether the stock market celebrates Broadcom for its VMware actions, that's one thing. The other side is how the customer base will develop in the coming years after this rude treatment, including of partners. I assume that a significant proportion of customers will simply switch to other platforms. If you are interested, you can read the many details and impressions of VMware Explore 2025 in the German heise article.

VMware now also works on submarines

There is another interesting piece of information about VMware that I recently came across. When submarines dive, they may be offline for weeks – a problem for software systems that need to contact the manufacturer's cloud repeatedly in order to remain activated.

At the end of August 2025, The Register reported in an article entitled We all live in a virtual machine, a virtual machine, a virtual machine, that VMware had adapted its licensing so that the product could also be used on submarines.

The new licenses became necessary due to the switch to VMware subscriptions. These subscriptions require customers to either work in "connected mode," in which their systems generate a license activity report every 180 days and automatically upload it to VMware, or in "disconnected mode," in which customers must upload the license information manually.

According to the register, VMware now allows some users to mark their licenses as "critical." This eliminates the need to provide license usage reports by a certain date.

Of course, this immediately gives rise to amusing memes and jokes: try to surface the submarine or fire a torpedo, and a warning appears saying "Sorry, operation is delayed until the license report is uploaded." And what actually happens if a submarine is lost and can only be recovered after many months, or is never found again? Will the customer's navy be sued for "license violation"? Questions upon questions – luckily, some British submarines still operate with Windows 95 – you don't need stuff like VMware for that, right?

VMware Explore 2025: Visitor numbers drop to a quarter; VMware for submarines

VMware Explore 2025 with declining visitor numbers

VMware now also works on submarines

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