Broadcom didn't acquire VMware. They gutted it. The invite-only partner program, the VCSP sunset, killing the authorized reseller tier. None of this was consolidation. It was amputation.
What nobody in this industry wants to say out loud: Broadcom looked at thousands of small VARs and MSPs who'd built their entire businesses on VMware and decided they weren't worth the cost of supporting. A small fraction of partners drove the bulk of the revenue — by most estimates, the top tier accounted for the vast majority. So they cut the rest loose. That's it. That's the whole strategy.
The partners who made it through saw this coming a year ago and started moving their virtualization stacks somewhere else. The ones who didn't are scrambling for Nutanix certifications right now and pretending they planned it that way.
Here's the thing I keep coming back to: when a PE-backed acquirer tells you "nothing will change for partners," that's your cue to start your exit plan. Not next quarter. That afternoon.