‘We’re talking hundreds of customers across the Americas, U.K. and EU proper, as well as all throughout APAC. These are very large enterprises, ranging from mid-large enterprise all the way through Fortune 100 customers,’ says11:11 Systems CEO Brett Diamond.
VMware partner 11:11 Systems is acquiring hundreds of enterprise customers from IBM in a blockbuster purchase to expand 11:11’s global footprint and drive VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) adoption.
“We’re talking hundreds of customers across the Americas, U.K. and EU proper, as well as all throughout APAC,” 11:11’s CEO Brett Diamond told CRN. “These are very large enterprises, ranging from mid-large enterprise all the way through Fortune 100 customers.”
Fairfield, N.J.-based 11:11 is acquiring hundreds of VMware enterprise customers from IBM Cloud, which already has an existing VMware footprint.
“We’re excited about the opportunity that it brings to these customers because, as the largest privately held provider of VMware services globally, we’re giving these clients that we are acquiring an opportunity to migrate over to our VCF platform,” said Diamond (pictured above).
IBM Cloud Stops Selling VMware
11:11’s acquisition comes approximately one year after IBM stopped selling new VMware licenses and services to customers due to sweeping changes Broadcom made to its VMware Cloud Service Provider program.
[Related: VMware Partner: ‘We Love To See’ Broadcom’s $42B Anthropic AI Bet]
In October 2025, IBM Cloud stopped selling VMware on IBM Cloud offerings to customers who did not have at least one active VMware workload running on IBM Cloud.
Additionally, new deployments of VMware Solutions offerings were no longer available for new IBM customers as of last October.
“IBM made it known publicly that they were no longer going to be supporting the VMware platform about a year ago when they were cut from the VCSP program,” said Diamond.
“We were the logical choice for IBM to go with when they were looking to potentially move this customer base over, simply because of our scale and the types of clients that we work with,” the CEO added. “So anything that’s VMware-related is what we acquired and will be migrating over to us, and that’s global in scale across the Americas, EMEA and APAC.”
11:11’s customer base is predominantly mid to large enterprises.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
IBM Cloud Customers 11:11 Systems Is Acquiring
The IBM customers 11:11 is acquiring are already running some form of VMware-based platform today.
These enterprise customers fall into two use cases, 11:11 Chief Technology Officer Justin Giardina told CRN.
“For the bigger percentage of the customers that will move on to the VCF platform, those customers are today on a VMware-enabled platform. It’s just that, from an IBM perspective, those platforms were more dedicated to each individual customer,” Giardina said.
The smaller fraction of customers are already on a VMware-enabled stack powered by VMware Cloud Director. “11:11’s platform—since we have the console and all the integrations within the VMware Cloud Director—just for that subset of customers, not only will be able to get the same features they have, but plus a whole lot more,” the CTO added.
Driving VMware VCF Adoption On 11:11
One big goal is to drive client adoption of VMware’s VCF offering on 11:11’s own platform.
“We’re going to be collaborating strategically with each customer to make sure that we put the right plan in place to move them to our infrastructure,” said Dante Orsini, chief revenue officer at 11:11. “We’ve made significant investments in our platform. So we’re excited to share that with these customers and give them the path forward to continue to grow.”
Diamond said most of these new customers have been leveraging VMware for many years, if not decades.
“We still believe that VMware is the best virtualization software out there, and that’s why we leverage it. It’s why we use it. It’s why they have such a large market share, regardless of what the other hypervisors are that are available,” the CEO said. “So my expectation, while I can’t tell you what the future holds, would be that the large majority would want to migrate over to our platform in the very immediate future.”
Broadcom’s Ram Velaga, in a statement to CRN, said 11:11 Systems reflects VMware by Broadcom’s cloud service provider vision.
“With a global platform, extensive VMware experience, more than 6,000 customers and a portfolio spanning cloud, connectivity and security, 11:11 Systems is well positioned to support enterprise customers as they modernize critical workloads utilizing VMware Cloud Foundation,” said Velaga, president of Broadcom’s Infrastructure Software Group.
11:11 ‘Deploying New Facilities’ To Help Customers
The acquisition further expands 11:11 Systems’ global reach across North America, EMEA, APAC and South America and expands its ability to support complex enterprise migrations through an integrated portfolio of cloud infrastructure, connectivity, cyber resilience and recovery services.
Diamond said while inheriting hundreds of new customers is a lot of work, his company is well prepared to handle the influx of clients on a global scale.
“In most of these facilities and regions, we’ve already got infrastructure, employees and operations teams in these regions. So it’s really just about expanding existing locations that we already have,” the CEO said.
However, Diamond said his company will also be “deploying new facilities throughout LATAM, some in the EU and some locations in Asia that we don’t have today, which is great for us because it provides us with an additional point of presence to expand the 11:11 platform.”
The acquisition of select IBM VMware Cloud Service Provider enterprise customers will mark 11:11’s eighth purchase of a VMware CSP business and eleventh acquisition overall over the past several years.
“We probably have about 20 years of virtualization experience,” said CTO Giardina.
“We’re ready to take the work that’s needed to migrate these customers. Since they’re coming from VMware environments, whatever data mover and technology or process that we’ve used in the past, really applies to any customer now coming to us,” he said. “So we’re ready.”
