Strategy & Negotiation · The Exit

What partial Broadcom exit economics actually look like in 2026.

A full exit is the headline. A partial exit is the realistic case for most buyers. The economics of moving 30 to 60 percent of a Broadcom footprint differ from the all or nothing models, and the negotiation posture differs with them.

By The Negotiation Desk · Strategy & Negotiation · Archetype: The Exit

Published 7 Mar 2026 · Updated 17 May 2026

The Broadcom exit conversation in 2026 is dominated by two extremes. The full exit, in which the buyer announces a complete migration off a product line, and the do nothing renewal, in which the buyer signs the seller's paper at a number the buyer dislikes but accepts. Most buyers the Desk works with are in neither place. They are working through a partial exit. A portion of the footprint moves. A portion stays. The economics of the partial exit are not a midpoint between the two extremes. They are their own shape, with their own negotiation posture and their own risks.

This piece is the Desk's working view of how partial exit economics actually play out, drawn from costed pathway work across VCF, Symantec endpoint, Carbon Black Cloud and CA product lines. The numbers below are not theoretical. They reflect what buyers in our 2025 and early 2026 file actually spent, what they kept, what the residual Broadcom contract looked like after the partial move, and how the seller's commercial posture changed across the boundary.

The pattern that holds across the file is that a partial exit produces a stronger renewal posture on the retained footprint than a full exit would, because the buyer is still a Broadcom customer with a Broadcom contract to renew. The seller is not losing the account. The seller is losing some of it. The retained piece is negotiated with the partial move already executed and visible. That is a different conversation than either of the extremes.

What partial actually means

The Desk's working definition of a partial exit is a move that takes between 30 and 60 percent of the line off Broadcom paper inside an eighteen month window. Below 30 percent the move is closer to a workload reshape than an exit and the seller reads it accordingly. Above 60 percent the move is closer to a full exit and the residual contract is too small to anchor the retained posture. Inside the 30 to 60 percent band the partial exit produces the strongest combination of execution leverage and contractual posture.

The shape of the move matters as much as the size. A partial exit that takes a clean subset, such as a specific business unit, a specific geography, or a specific deployment generation, executes more cleanly than a partial exit that takes a percentage across the whole footprint. The clean subset has a defined edge. The percentage across the whole footprint has no edge, which makes the destination work harder and the residual contract harder to renegotiate.

VCF partial exit

VCF is the line where partial exit economics are most studied in the file. The typical shape is a move of a defined business unit or geography off VCF onto Nutanix or onto a hyperscaler footprint with a VMware compatible compute layer. The retained footprint stays on VCF subscription with a renegotiated entitlement count and a renegotiated bundle composition.

The transition cost of a partial VCF exit, sized at 40 to 50 percent of the estate, lands in the range of two to three times the annual VCF run rate for the moved portion. The retained portion produces a renewal outcome 18 to 32 percent below what the buyer would have paid on the same retained footprint without a partial move executed. The combination of transition cost recovery and retained discount produces payback windows in the range of two and a half to four years, which is meaningfully tighter than the full exit case.

Symantec partial exit

Symantec endpoint partial exits are operationally the cleanest in the file. The destination set is mature, the migration is well practised, and the residual Symantec footprint can be renegotiated against a visible alternative pathway already in flight. The typical shape is a move of a defined seat population, often the most operationally demanding population, to CrowdStrike or SentinelOne, with the retained Symantec footprint right sized to a smaller and cleaner subset.

The transition cost lands in the range of one to one and a half times the annual Symantec run rate for the moved seats. The retained Symantec contract typically lands 22 to 38 percent below the seller's opening renewal position. The combined economics on a partial Symantec exit are usually cost positive inside an eighteen month window, which is among the tightest payback structures in the file.

"A partial exit is not a half move. It is a different move. The retained piece is what produces the second half of the leverage, not the moved piece. Buyers who treat the retained piece as an afterthought give back most of the gain."Exit Planning Lead, The Desk

Carbon Black partial exit

Carbon Black partial exits in the file most often take the endpoint coverage and leave the container and Cloud Workload coverage in place. The reverse pattern, leaving the endpoint and moving the container coverage, is less common because the container alternative set is less mature. The transition cost for the endpoint portion lands close to the Symantec endpoint case, in the range of one to one and a half times the annual run rate for the moved seats. The retained container piece typically lands 12 to 24 percent below the seller's opening, which is a smaller concession than the endpoint case because the seller's defence of the container line is tighter.

CA partial exit

CA partial exits are the most varied in shape because the CA portfolio contains many products with different replacement profiles. A common shape is moving CA AIOps onto a modern observability stack while retaining CA Workload Automation and CA identity. Another common shape is the reverse. The transition cost on the moved component lands in the range of one and a half to three times the annual run rate for that component. The retained components typically renegotiate 14 to 28 percent below the seller's opening, with the variance reflecting how cleanly the moved component was decoupled from the retained set.

The decoupling work matters. CA components that were tightly integrated under the consolidated contract resist clean separation. Buyers who attempted a partial CA exit without first decoupling the integrations spent more on the transition than the costed pathway suggested. Buyers who funded the decoupling work in advance produced the modelled outcome.

The numbers in summary

VCF partial exit, transition cost on moved portion2x to 3x annual

VCF retained portion, vs seller opening−18% to −32%

Symantec partial exit, transition cost1x to 1.5x annual

Symantec retained portion, vs seller opening−22% to −38%

Carbon Black partial exit, retained vs opening−12% to −24%

CA partial exit, retained vs opening−14% to −28%

Avg payback window across partial exits18 to 30 months

What we have seen on live deals

The buyers who produced the strongest partial exit outcomes in our 2025 file did three things consistently. They sized the move at 30 to 60 percent of the footprint, with a clean subset rather than a percentage across the whole. They funded the decoupling work in advance of the move, particularly on lines with tightly integrated components. And they treated the retained renewal as a separate negotiation with its own preparation, not as a footnote to the partial move.

The buyers who produced weaker outcomes treated the partial move as the headline and the retained piece as an administrative consequence. The retained piece, on those engagements, renewed inside the seller's standard concession band rather than producing the partial exit premium the costed pathway suggested. The seller's commercial team is not obliged to offer concession on the retained piece. The concession has to be extracted, and the extraction requires the same preparation as a standalone renewal.

The third pattern in the file is that the partial exit announcement matters. Buyers who announced the partial move at the right point in the calendar, with the destination chosen and the contract drafted, produced retained renewals at the lower end of the concession range. Buyers who announced the partial move late, after the renewal was already in commercial review, produced retained renewals at the upper end of the range. The calendar of the announcement is part of the economics.

The Desk's exit planning work produces the costed partial pathway in writing before the announcement. The same discipline applies across the VMware practice, where partial exits are most common, and across the rest of the Broadcom portfolio.

The takeaway

Size the move at 30 to 60 percent and pick a clean subset. A clean subset executes. A percentage across the whole footprint does not.
Fund the decoupling work in advance on lines with integrated components. The transition cost overruns in the file are mostly decoupling overruns, not migration overruns.
Treat the retained renewal as its own negotiation. The seller will not offer the partial exit premium on the retained piece unless the buyer prepares for it as a standalone file.