‘As of early January 2025, Ingram Micro will no longer be doing business with Broadcom and have limited engagement with VMware in select regions. Neither are material to our business,’ the world’s second largest distributor said in a statement to CRN.

The world’s second largest technology distributor, Ingram Micro, has dropped Broadcom from its lineup after it failed to reach an agreement with the chipmaker and software company and will limit the sale of VMware licenses and products.

“We were unable to reach an agreement with Broadcom that would help our customers deliver the best technology outcomes now and in the future while providing an appropriate shareholder return,” Ingram Micro said Monday in a statement provided to CRN.

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.”

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One longtime VMware partner who transacts through Ingram Micro said his company had not yet been notified of the change, which comes amid concerns that the time it takes for Broadcom to provide quotes has ballooned to around four weeks.

“The distributors are not the issue. Broadcom is,” said the solution provider CTO via email, asking not to be named in order to speak candidly about his experience working with Broadcom since it acquired VMware in November 2023. “They need to empower their distributors to be able to make quotes or Broadcom should double their sales force if they want full control of every quote that is requested by a partner or end user. … The average is four weeks from deal [registration] and request to [distributor] for a quote.”

That process used to take as little as two days prior to the acquisition, the CTO said.

“Prior to the acquisition it was two to three days,” the executive said. “It was one to two weeks once quoting was available in the summer and went to four to five weeks in November. We are just [now] getting quotes requested the week of Nov. 4.”

The Broadcom partner, which holds VMware Master Competencies, was already in the process of changing to another distributor, but the executive is not hopeful his company will have a better experience.

“We are switching from Ingram to Arrow for our Broadcom business but expect it to be just as painful,” the source said.

The Register first reported the news.

“Broadcom doesn’t have anything to add to this story,” the company said in a statement to CRN.

Ingram Micro said the business it transacted with Broadcom is not material to its revenue.

“For us and the more than 1,500 vendors and [161,000] customers we work with, the future of business is focused on transforming relationships, not just transacting sales,” according to the statement. “We are hyper-focused on our customers and removing friction from our business and theirs. So whether our customers want a new source or a new solution entirely, we are here to smoothly and successfully transition the tech and continue growing our business together.”

Broadcom stock is sailing high on chip sales and expected AI chip sales, which as a stand- alone business could drive revenue to between $60 billion and $90 billion, based on conversations it has had with its three leading customers, the company said in its most recent earnings call Thursday.

VMware revenue under the first full year of Broadcom ownership was up 3.3 percent to $13.8 billion in the most recent quarter. In its final year of independent ownership, VMware achieved $13.35 billion in revenue. Quarter-to-quarter revenue was flat for VMware, with revenue contributing $3.8 billion in revenue for the quarter.

Broadcom closed on the deal to buy VMware over a year ago following a fraught,17- month sales process in which the chipmaker’s $69 billion deal was heavily scrutinized by regulators.

Broadcom’s chipmaking business is still operating under an agreement in the U.S. and U.K. that allows regulators to inspect its books due to several years of what they said were “illegal” sales practices investigators brought to light in 2021.