As expected, Broadcom’s pending acquisition of VMware cast a large shadow over the latter’s Explore event this week, with many still questioning what VMware might look like if the event has a 2024 edition.

VMware’s management did its best to balance the fact that it’s still an ongoing independent entity until Broadcom’s pending acquisition closes. This included CEO Raghu Raghuram reiterating that fact when asked about what might change with VMware’s operations once/if that deal closes.

“Firstly, the acquisition has not closed,” Raghuram said during a question-and-answer session with analysts and reporters following his event opening keynote speech. “The combined company will start functioning after the close of the acquisition. So that would be a better time to address how things are different.”

Raghuram did add a bit more flavor later during the session, but mostly deferred to what Broadcom CEO Hock Tan has publicly stated, and also said during a prepared video that played early in Ragharum’s event-opening keynote speech.

“I would refer you to Broadcom and their stated plans, and what Hock Tan has written in public blogs, and you heard a little bit in the video as well,” Raghuram added. “They intend to continue to invest and operate in VMware as a continuation of our current business, reinforcing the multicloud strategy and building upon the multicloud strategy as a singular division within Broadcom, so that's what they've announced.”

Tan recently stated that Broadcom plans to invest $2 billion per year in VMware.

“Half of that investment has already been earmarked toward accelerating the deployment of VMware solutions to customers, enabling us to increase cloud competition by growing and strengthening VMware’s customer base and bringing value to the on-premises data center while advancing software-enabled workloads,” Tan wrote.

Similar to last year’s Explore event when the deal was still fresh, Tan was also in attendance for Ragharum’s keynote this year.

The most talked about challenge will be for VMware to avoid the fate of some of Broadcom’s past acquisitions. The most dire being its purchase of CA Technologies in late 2018, and Symantec in 2019.

Sumit Dhawan, president of VMware, attempted to tackle that potential challenge by stating VMware had managed to maintain its operational focus through past ownership structures.

“Broadcom’s operating model is to when they acquire businesses, they let them operate independently,” Dhawan said. “Our operations in terms of the strategy that we laid out and the portfolio we deliver and how we serve customers, that will stay on as a mission of VMware regardless of the ownership structure. … We've always had a focus on our strategy mission, operated independently and delivered on it and under EMC and Dell, it's going to be the same with Broadcom.”

Dhawan also touted VMware’s need to continue partnering with the broader cloud ecosystem in order to grow its business.

“Virtualization is an abstraction and subtraction of hardware, so you can do abstraction of one type of hardware. By definition, there is no existence of VMware if you don't have a broad hardware ecosystem,” Dhawan said.

Alex Demeule, an analyst at Technology Business Research, just prior to the Explore event explained that the overarching area of concern is that Broadcom will act as it has acted in the past when it comes to its acquisitions.

“I think so much of the conversation around the Broadcom acquisition really revolves around how those businesses are treated after the acquisition gets closed,” Demeule said, noting VMware has a “sticky installed base in the virtualization market. I think that's really what Broadcom is after. Broadcom to me looks like a private-equity company as much as a technology company. They are just really good at buying sticky installed bases and generating free cash flow off of them.”

Demeule noted that VMware’s most likely source of continuing to generate free cash flow will be in its ability in taking advantage of its Tanzu cloud-native platform, something the vendor updated during the event.

Outside of that focus, Demeule said it’s likely Broadcom could look to trim under-performing operations, specifically citing VMware’s Carbon Black cloud security business.

“I think trimming makes a lot of sense for Broadcom and making divestitures in terms of how can they improve profitability,” Demeule said.

However, Tan’s $2 billion per-year investment commitment did “throw a wrench” in Demeule’s view on how Broadcom will extract a return from its VMware investment.

“It does kind of indicate divestitures to a point because it allows you to improve profitability by shedding unprofitable assets, while allowing you to spend more,” Demeule said, though he added that it will be interesting to watch where that investment is spent in the cloud ecosystem and how long Broadcom is willing to wait for a return.

“I think between Tanzu and Carbon Black, I see them not being very patient with Carbon Black, a little bit more patient with Tanzu, but I think that those profitability goals will be the front-and-center focus for the company over the two-year horizon after the transaction closes,” Demeule said.