Broadcom’s Cindy Loyd out as channel chief after year of VMware upheaval: CRN exclusive

“Cindy Loyd remains at Broadcom and is transitioning into a new role within the company,” Broadcom said Wednesday in response to a query from CRN. “We will publicly announce our new channel chief in the new year.”

Broadcom’s global channel chief Cindy Loyd, who has presided over the sweeping VMware channel changes over the last year, is taking a new job within the company.

“Cindy Loyd remains at Broadcom and is transitioning into a new role within the company,” Broadcom said Wednesday in response to a query from CRN US.

“We will publicly announce our new channel chief in the new year.”

Loyd, a six-year Broadcom channel veteran, took on the role of vice president of global partners and global commercial sales for VMware partners in November 2023, just as the chip and software behemoth acquired the virtualisation leader for $69bn.

Following the acquisition, Loyd was the highest-ranking channel executive overseeing a series of fast and furious changes in the VMware channel, including a plan to take the top 2,000 accounts direct, termination of partners with plans to invite a select group back, and dramatic price increases that have left many partners and customers seeking VMware alternatives.

“Broadcom has abandoned the channel market by making it nearly impossible to work with them due to constantly changing requirements, packaging and changes to the program,” said longtime VMware partner Jason Slagle, president of Toledo, Ohio-based MSP CNWR, who has been frustrated with Broadcom’s approach to VMware’s channel.

Loyd came to Broadcom through its $18.9bn acquisition of CA, where she started working in 1991. Prior to that, Broadcom Vice President of OEM Ricky Cooper held the title of channel chief at VMware, replacing Sandy Hogan in 2022.

“I hope for the sake of the VMware product the new channel chief understands the value the channel brings to products such as VMware,” Slagle said.

“Before Broadcom it was fine. They were easy to work with and I was selling a decent amount. They’ve basically made it impossible to transact with them, and Ingram being out basically seals the fact I won't sell it anymore.”

The distributor said that beginning in January 2025 “Ingram Micro will no longer be doing business with Broadcom and have limited engagement with VMware in select regions.”

Since taking over VMware, Broadcom did away with perpetual licenses, boiled VMware’s catalog of thousands of products down to four bundled offerings and changed how customers are charged pricing VMware per core. That resulted in bills that were in some cases eight to 10 times higher than customers had paid previously.

Loyd and Broadcom CEO Hock Tan talked with partners in a closed-door session at VMware Explore 2024 in August about the upheaval caused by the acquisition.

“We really wanted to acknowledge that we did all of these things in a really short amount of time because we want to transform very quickly, and really just acknowledging the impact it had on their quarter and the last nine months in general and listening to them,” Loyd later told CRN US in August about the meeting.

One concern among partners is a lack of communication about the changes to their VMware business. Partners were caught off-guard in December 2023 when Broadcom sent a blanket letter of termination to the entire reseller community with a promise that it would invite some of them back.

For months, some partners were left questioning whether they would be able to sell VMware in 2024 or service existing customers. In February the company said it had eliminated about 7,000 partners while inviting 18,000 back.

Loyd defended Broadcom’s position of not communicating with channel partners, and said Broadcom is not looking back, when she talked with CRN US in August.

“I think the other thing too is that because we have been doing so much transformation, we haven’t had that level of communication. And it didn’t make sense to communicate a lot with them during those nine months because so much was continuously changing,” she told CRN US in August. “Now what we tried to really get across is that we’re at a point of stability. All the foundational pieces have been put into place. Now it’s all about stabilising and returning to growth so that we can really get focused on what the future is. You know? It’s like we don’t want to look back anymore. It’s done.”

While speculation around Broadcom’s chip selling prospects is driving the company to a record-high trillion-dollar market cap last week, in its most recent quarter Broadcom revealed that VMware revenue was flat quarter to quarter.

At market research firm Forrester, principal analysts Naveen Chhabra and Tracy Woo predicted that VMware customers will shrink their deployments by 40 percent this year in favor of alternatives, which include increased migration to the public cloud, on-premises alternatives and new architectures.

This article originally appeared on CRN UK sister website CRN.