We run a lot of ESXi with vSphere (part of overall VCF solution). It works very well. But I am part of Big Corp. so they don’t mind paying. We are good via warranties etc using what we already purchased. I don’t know that I share the same sentiment that we could have just used ProxMox. We are a Dell heavy shop and there is a new Dell Private Cloud product that is very promising. More like choose your own adventure.
Dell private cloud lock in would be the death of any company. You don't want to be isolated to one hardware vendor. We've told Dell to kick rocks many times for renewals and would not be able to do that if we were in their Cloud, which requires Dell hardware.
Don't do it
It’s not their Cloud, you buy a bunch of PowerEdge R7725 for example and then choose between OpenShift, VCF and one other I can’t remember at the moment.
It’s on prem
This is the only POSSIBLE rational argument for this approach. 4x price, on 1/2 the customer base is still 2x revenue with less customers to deal with. They want to keep the Big Corp clients that are happy to pay.
Now if it actually works out like this, only time will tell I suppose?