Broadcom rode a VMware-powered financial wave to robust earnings for its first fiscal quarter of 2024, which CEO Hock Tan said he expects to continue roaring through at least the rest of its fiscal year. That roar will also continue to include contributions from Carbon Black.

VMware accounted for most of Broadcom’s 34% increase in Q1 revenues, contributing $12 billion to the coffers. Broadcom still managed to grow its business sans-VMware by 11% year over year.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan told investors during the vendor’s earnings call that he expects “continued strong bookings at VMware will accelerate revenue growth through the rest of fiscal 2024.” This is based on Broadcom’s recent shift focused on converting its VMware customers as they come up for renewals with deeper software services on a subscription basis.

“Revenue from VMware will grow double-digit sequentially quarter over quarter through the rest of the fiscal year. This is simply a result of our strategy with VMware,” Tan said. “We are focused on upselling customers, particularly those who are already running their compute workloads with vSphere virtualization tools, to upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation.”

Tan had previously stated that Broadcom’s integration of VMware would take a year and cost around $1 billion in “transition spending,” but the effort will result in a combined entity that will generate $50 billion in revenue over the next year.

Tan later noted that these efforts have “been very successful so far,” though he did add during another question on the topic “now that kinks have been worked out.”

Broadcom’s changes to VMware’s licensing structure have drawn considerable attention. Analysts have noted the moves have left long-time enterprise customers and VMware resell partners scrambling.

Bruce Kornfeld, who is currently chief marketing and product officer at StorMagic, but spent nine years at Dell (last as executive director of global alliances in 2012), explained to SDxCentral in a recent interview that small- and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) that have relied heavily on VMware products are having to adjust to Broadcom's new focus.

“Their concern is that they’ve built infrastructure. They’ve built all of their infrastructure around running applications using VMware,” Kornfeld said. “Microsoft has done a great job over the last few years with Azure and Azure stack, all their good products, but by far VMware has dominant market share. And if you talk to Forrester and IDC, they’ll give you the numbers, but I would say 90%-plus of the market is still VMware. So customers are concerned because now they have all of their processes and procedures they know. Their people are trained on how to manage applications in a VMware environment. And now, the rug might be pulled from under them here and they are like ‘what am I going to do?’”

Broadcom also said it was now holding onto VMware’s Carbon Black security platform, which it will offer alongside Broadcom’s legacy Symantec operations.

Rob Greer, VP and GM for Broadcom’s Enterprise Security Group, explained in a blog post that “Broadcom will make significant investments in both brands, and continue to offer both portfolios under the Enterprise Security Group business unit.”

Greer added that Symantec is Broadcom’s security platform that “concentrates on data and network protection, while Carbon Black’s complimentary portfolio specializes in both endpoint detection and response (EDR) and application control.”

Greer explained that Symantec’s data center security product targets traditional workloads in the data center, with a complementary offering from Carbon Black that when combined will provide a more complete package.

“Bringing both network and data telemetry to Carbon Black will enable greater visibility and control for our joint customers,” Greer wrote. “Under the new Enterprise Security Group, customers will continue to receive the best service with more dedicated resources and focused support than ever before.”

Greer also stated that Broadcom would continue to invest into Carbon Black, though some integration could impact each brand’s engineering footprint.

“Both Carbon Black and Symantec have existing engineering sites in India,” Greer said. “While we see the opportunity to converge them, we do not expect to make headcount reductions in those sites. In fact, we plan to make more investments in India. In addition, we will continue to invest in support and R&D for both brands, retaining key technical and product leaders to ensure continued success today and in the future.”

That “future” is a turnaround from what Broadcom had initially planned for some of VMware's operations.

Broadcom last month signed a deal to offload VMware’s End-User Computing (EUC) Division to KKR for $4 billion. That move continued its efforts to shed what Tan described as noncore VMware assets.

Shortly after Broadcom closed on the VMware acquisition, Tan lumped the EUC business and Carbon Black into a bucket of noncore assets.

“We’ll find good homes for them because there are a lot of very interested parties who are more than happy to take those assets,” Tan told investors during Broadcom’s previous earnings call.

Jason Rolleston, VP and GM of Carbon Black at Broadcom, previously told SDxCentral that Carbon Black was going to operate as a standalone business.

“The biggest change for Carbon Black is our increased focus. We no longer report to or take our lead from VMware,” Rolleston told SDxCentral in an email. “We are now an independent business unit, which allows us to do things a bit differently and continue to align our business around addressing the unique demands of the cybersecurity market. We now have the flexibility to continue to drive innovation for the specific challenges our customers face with cybersecurity detection and response.”

Greer added in his blog post that Broadcom would be releasing more details on the integration plans over the next few weeks and concluded with a somewhat ominous stinger.

“As ransomware attacks and other cybersecurity threats continue to rise, you can rest assured that Carbon Black and Symantec together will provide the mission-critical technologies to defend the most complex, highly regulated organizations,” Greer wrote.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Rob Greer, VP and GM for Broadcom’s Enterprise Security Group.