Broadcom’s claims that it can support European cloud service providers building competitive sovereign solutions are exaggerated, according to the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers Europe (CISPE).
The US company is promoting its VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) software as the enabling technology for the European Union’s Sovereign Cloud, but Broadcom is not the solution to Europe’s technology sovereignty problems, according to CISPE secretary-general Francisco Mingorance.
“VCF is a proprietary product with limited interoperability and substitutability, controlled by a foreign vendor that has behaved like a bully towards customers and channel partners. If Europe needs an example of the dangers of over-reliance on dominant overseas players, Broadcom is it,” Mingorance said, according to a post on CISPE’s website.
CISPE has cited several reasons why VCF doesn’t fit the bill, in particular highlighting its lack of portability. This means that it doesn’t qualify as resilient under CISPE’s Sovereign and Resilient Cloud Framework.
Earlier this month, the EU unveiled proposals for its Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) to strengthen Europe’s digital economy. CADA will encourage investment in European research, lay down conditions for European data centers, and provide a single EU-wide assessment framework for cloud and AI sovereignty.
CISPE said that Broadcom is a long way short of fulfilling the conditions proposed for CADA. Broadcom would fail to meet anything but a Level 1 certification under the CADA sovereignty framework, CISPE said, adding that Broadcom’s terms and conditions offer limited maintenance commitments, no source-code escrow, no substitution plan and no Data Act certification, all likely to fall foul of CADA’s recommendations.
This is not the first time that CISPE has had a run-in with Broadcom. In December last year, the organization urged the EU central court to overturn the Broadcom/VMware merger. And in March, CISPE wrote an open letter warning of US hyperscalers trying to “sovereignty wash” their services.