While some users were somewhat surprised by the timing of the acquisition, they say they also understand why VMware may have agreed to the deal. One reason is larger corporate IT shops gravitate increasingly to SaaS-based software, which has eroded VMware's mindshare among IT pros. VMware has evolved its focus in recent years toward multi-cloud deployments and SaaS subscriptions. Meanwhile, all the major cloud providers -- Microsoft, AWS and Google -- have their own virtualization built into their cloud offerings.

"We took a lot of hardware out of the data center and virtualized everything, and then moved a lot of it, including our two biggest apps, out to the cloud," Kirsch said. "The footprint of our VMware environment has diminished as we move more into the SaaS space."

Another user, a CIO in charge of system architecture for a state university who requested anonymity, agrees with Kirsch. He noted that his company gravitated to Office 365 the past few years, perhaps the most popular SaaS-based offering in the market. Consequently, he was able to eliminate dozens of servers from his data center and saved on VMware's licensing fees.

"When you move your email to Office 365 you can cut down on email infrastructure, including on-prem servers," he said. "SaaS-based software in general has been taking a chunk out of VMware the last few years "

Microsoft underscored its commitment to the cloud in late 2020, saying that Exchange Server 2019 would be the last on-premises product it would deliver. It is switching to a subscription-based model.

VMware was late in moving to a subscription model a little over a year ago, later than most of its competitors. While the program has received good reviews from users, according to CEO Raghu Raghuram in an interview with TechTarget early this year, the company holds  firmly to its standard delivery method.

"Customers like the idea of somebody else managing and delivering software to them on a subscription basis," Raghuram said in that interview. "Having said that, there are still lots of customers that like the Capex model, too. You don't want to tell customers they have to buy a product only one way."

Broadcom's Tan is being more aggressive in his stance for subscription selling, promising investors in a recent call that VMware will make a "rapid transition from perpetual licenses to subscriptions," wholly replacing the buy-once =-and-use-forever approach.

While Tan acknowledges that such a transition might take multiple years, he might face some pushback from VMware users who would prefer to buy software on an as-needed basis.

"It's clear the trend of buying cloud-based apps through a subscription is gaining acceptance, but not everyone is going to like that if it gets forced on them," said one user, who requested anonymity.

VMware sells across a wide range of customers from large to small, but smaller VMware shops typically don't like getting locked into a particular product "with a three- or five-year plan like that," he said.

As Editor At Large with TechTarget's News Group, Ed Scannell is responsible for writing and reporting breaking news, news analysis and features focused on technology issues and trends affecting corporate IT professionals.