EU gives green light to Broadcom VMware deal

EU competition authorities have approved US chipmaker Broadcom's proposed $61bn takeover of cloud computing firm VMware after offering up remedies for rival Marvell Technology.

Broadcom offered Marvell and other rivals interoperability commitments related to its Fibre Channel Host-Bus Adapters (FC HBAs), the European Commission said.

An FC HBA can connect a host server to a switch or storage device, connect multiple storage systems, or connect multiple servers when used as both application hosts and storage systems.

"The commitments offered by Broadcom will enable its only rival Marvell, to continue competing on equal footing and ensure a similar protection for any future entrants," said EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

Under the deal, Marvell and other rivals will also have guaranteed access to the source code for all of Broadcom's current and future FC HBA drivers through an irrevocable open source license, she added.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com