Full narration of the briefing. Click a section heading to jump the player to that moment.
The single most common mistake we see is running the VMware negotiation and the mainframe negotiation as two unrelated projects, usually by two different teams who do not talk to each other. They face the same counterparty, executing the same strategy, measuring against overlapping evidence. Run separately, you present two weak positions. Run together, you present one.
I am Tom, Claire and Daniel are both here for the last one, and this is how you put nine episodes onto a single page and actually run it.
Start with the timeline, and build it backwards from the deadline that actually binds rather than the one on your renewal letter. On the mainframe that is eighteen months, because that is the runway the evidence supports and because your capacity reporting window sits inside it. On VMware it is nine months, working back from the support horizon around October 2027 rather than from your contract date. Inside those, three fixed points.
The decommissioning has to finish before any measurement window opens. The assessment has to finish before you request a quote. And the quote has to be requested in writing, early, at a named date.
Then the evidence, and this is where most campaigns are won or lost before anyone speaks. Four documents. Your entitlement position, which for most mainframe estates does not currently exist in one place and takes months to build. Your deployment against that entitlement, because that gap is your strongest argument and it is the one the vendor has publicly conceded exists.
Your core counts per processor, verified against the sixteen core floor. And your benchmark, which now has to come from outside, because the channel contraction removed the price discovery you used to get from three competing resellers.
Now rank the asks, and notice that price is not at the top. A cure period on every reporting obligation, thirty days, because enforcement is now automatic and on a timer. A cap on the next term, anchored to Broadcom's own published escalator. Line item visibility on the mainframe portfolio, with the refusal captured in writing if it comes.
Flexibility to reduce, whether that is a step down or a true down at anniversary. And then price. Because a discount sitting on a contract with no cap and no cure period is a discount you hand back at the next renewal, with interest, and usually more of it.
And be deliberate about what you give. Broadcom wants term length because it fills the backlog it reports to the market. It wants payment up front because that is cash. It wants the commitment to be non cancellable because revenue recognition depends on it.
Those three things are expensive for you and valuable for them, which makes them the best currency you hold. So do not defend a three year term for nothing and then discover you have no coin left when you ask for the cap. Decide in advance which of the three you are selling, and what each one buys.
Four decisions have to be made internally before you reply to anything. What is your genuine walk away position, stated as a number rather than a feeling. Which products, if any, you are seriously prepared to displace, remembering that Datacom and IDMS have no replacement and are the one place never to bluff. Whether you will litigate a contractual right if it comes to it, because the record shows Broadcom settles with customers who do and pushes everyone else.
And who signs. Because an account team that knows your approval path is longer than their quote window already holds the timing advantage.
So what does a good outcome look like across both estates. Not a headline discount. It looks like a cure period where there was none, a cap where there was none, visibility you did not have, a capacity position you chose rather than one measured for you, and a renewal date that sits where you want it rather than where it fell. Those compound in your favour every year.
A discount does not. That is the series. If you are facing either half of this estate, bring us the deal before you sign it, because almost everything in these ten episodes has to happen before the quote arrives, not after.
Redress Compliance works on contingency: our fee is 25 percent of what we save you. Nothing saved, nothing paid. Independent, buyer side only, never vendor funded. Want Redress to contact you? Reach out and we respond the same day.
Talk to a Broadcom negotiator