Company claims 1,000 percent price hike drove it from VMware to open source rival

… was a VMware bill for “10 times the sum it previously paid for software licenses,” per The Register.

… OpenNebula has enabled the company to dedicate more of its 3,000 bare metal server fleet to client loads instead of to VM management, as it had to with VMware. With OpenNebula purportedly requiring less management overhead, Beeks is reporting a 200 percent increase in VM efficiency since it now has more VMs on each server.

Damn. Pay less and gain significant efficiency increases.

It's generally wise to dump your low paying customers for high paying customers, but lord, these guys. The largest customers can't move quickly, so they get monster invoices. But they will eventually move and tank VMware. Bet there are already companies formed or forming to aid customers in switching to the hypervisor of their choice.

I'm dumber than a rock when it comes to business, but even I would have stood up in the boardroom, "These price hikes will wipe us off the map in 3-5 years. There's nothing special about our product keeping people here."

Apparently these idiots think they have the same type of customer lock that Oracle has. Well guys, switching hypervisors is a shitload easier than switching databases.