Broadcom, despite consternation about changes to the VMware software licensing terms, continues to rack up steady revenue gains from its VMware business unit, with infrastructure software revenue for the third quarter reaching $6.8 billion, a 17% year-over-year increase.

In total, infrastructure software revenue accounted for 43% of the $16 billion in total revenue Broadcom reported for the quarter.

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan also told industry analysts that momentum should continue in the forthcoming fourth quarter as the company expects infrastructure software revenue to be $6.7 billion, most of which will be generated by VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). This integrated platform combines a hypervisor, storage and networking into a single offering.

However, it’s not clear to what degree organizations that have agreed to license VCF are actually deploying all of its components. Many of those organizations have already deployed the VMware hypervisor, but continue to rely on other storage and networking platforms. The challenge now will be to convince the more than 90% of the top 10,000 customers that have licensed VCF to actually deploy it over the next two years, said Tan.

Additionally, Tan concedes it’s less clear what percentage of the 300,000 customers that have previously licensed VMware software might also embrace VCF, he added. In the next phase, Broadcom will focus on the next 20,000 to 30,000 mid-sized companies that make up its customer base, said Tan.

Overall, The Futurum Group CEO Daniel Newman said that while it’s clear that challenges persist, it does appear that Broadcom, despite ongoing controversy stemming from changes it made to the VMware licensing model, seems to have convinced the bulk of its larger customers to license VCF. In general, the attrition rate among existing customers has been much less than anticipated, he added.

However, lawsuits continue to be filed, the most recent of which was filed by Tesco, which alleges that the previous perpetual license under which it adopted VMware software guaranteed it would have access to upgrades and security patches through 2026, with an option to renew for four years. Tesco alleges it is now being required to pay twice for the same software licenses.

At the same time. Broadcom is also gaining traction with other large enterprises, including a strategic agreement with Walmart under which the retailer will rely on Broadcom to build a modern private cloud and edge computing environment.

Each IT organization will need to decide for itself what path forward makes the most sense for them. Few are going to simply rip and replace existing legacy platforms based on VMware software. Many may conclude that the total cost of IT is indeed lower if they standardize on a single integrated platform. Others might decide to migrate to another virtual machine platform or accelerate the pace they are transitioning to cloud-native applications based on Kubernetes clusters provided by a vendor other than Broadcom.

Regardless of approach, the one certain thing is that no matter what path IT teams take, most organizations will be running some amount of VMware software for many years to come, if, for no other reason, then the pace at which organizations migrate from one platform to another, no matter how incensed anyone might be, is usually glacial.