VMware Exodus Has Begun, Creating Major Opportunities for Wind River and New Entrants

Boost Mobile (previously referred to as DISH Wireless), the biggest and most popular Open Radio Access Network (RAN) operator, announced in December 2024 that it will utilize Wind River Studio Operator, the company’s Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform across its deployment. The operator had announced VMware as its cloud platform vendor, which would provide its Telco Cloud platform that included its Telco Cloud CaaS layer. These vendor swaps are not common for commercial networks, let alone in the platform domain where VMware and Wind River operate. However, the cloud-native and very modern nature of Boost Mobile’s network allows such a swap; this would have been impossible and disruptive in an older brownfield network where multiple abstraction layers, middleware, and custom interfaces have been implemented for years.

The exact reason for the swap is unknown, but it is widely rumored that the new aggressive pricing tactics of Broadcom for VMware products have steered the operator toward finding an alternative provider for the CaaS layer, which Wind River won. EchoStar’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO)—the parent company of Boost Mobile—claims that Wind River won due to its technical merit, but Broadcom’s tactics surely influenced, if not directly caused, the decision to swap.

Broadcom’s new strategy for VMware was made crystal clear when Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Hock Tan made the announcement that the vendor will focus on its top-2,000 customers for upsell and better licensing revenue. VMware has also bundled its previous 8,000+ Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) into 3, one of which is its VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) that also includes the Telco Cloud Platform, among 30 other software tools across 7 domains. For an operator that previously only licensed a single component, e.g., the Telco Cloud CaaS layer, the evolution to VCF may translate to a 10X or even 100X license cost increase, because it has to license a much larger suite than what it previously needed to.

Most telcos will not likely be in VMware’s top-2,000 client list, meaning that their business, requirements, and deployment issues will be deprioritized. Moreover, in the longer term, Broadcom may conclude that its telco software business may not be as profitable as other verticals and could decide to reduce development and support efforts, or even completely decommission that. This is causing uncertainty for operator CTOs and teams that are now upgrading to 5G Standalone (SA) and cloud-native networks.

However, VMware still has a foothold in virtualized networks, where its ESXi hypervisor practically has little competition for Virtual Network Function (VNF) deployment. OpenStack is a capable contender, but requires customization and Red Hat’s strategy is to migrate its customers to cloud-native OpenShift, which may not suit telcos with more traditional strategies. There are also new entrants, including Proxmox, Hyper-V, and others, but none offer the mainstream success and deployment of VMware’s ESXi and its vSphere product.

The Broadcom strategy will likely alienate most operators, even Tier Ones, as evidenced by the legal dispute between AT&T and the vendor for licensing issues and Broadcom’s recalcitrance to honor a signed contract. This will surely influence buying decisions and alienate operators upgrading to cloud-native and SA networks. This will translate to more opportunities for Wind River, Red Hat, hyperscalers, and new entrants. Wind River has proven to be one of the leading vendors for edge orchestration and management, a reason also cited by Boost Mobile for choosing it. For cloud-native telco networks, Wind River is in a very good position to increase its market share in a timely manner as operators are setting up the foundation for the Service Based Architecture (SBA) and looking toward 6G.

Mobile operators—regardless of their network deployment strategy and progress—should now reassess their cloud-native software stack, in light of the unpredictable (at best) and telco-dismissive (at worst) decisions by Broadcom. Even for brownfield operators that have deployed their cloud-native networks, switching to Wind River, which excels at edge orchestration, can provide a competitive advantage and faster time to market for new services and applications.