Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said that VMware has heard from enterprise customers and made VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) more integrated and user friendly to be the private cloud platform of choice.
Tan, speaking at VMware Explore in Las Vegas, said:
"It's been almost a year since Broadcom acquired VMware and from conversations with all of you, we've been hearing lots. We've been hearing from you. You're telling us you want our products to work better and be more user friendly. You want them to work together. You're asking us--me particularly--to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work. That's exactly what we've done."
Tan's mission during his keynote appearance at Explore was to convince customers that VCF can be its core platform for a variety of private cloud and AI workloads. Tan also noted that VMware has been guilty of creating complexity when it "fell in love with the promise of private cloud 10 years ago."
"Here's my very simple view for the future of the enterprise. Your enterprises are private. Private cloud. Private AI. Private data. It's about staying in control," said Tan. "Of course, you continue using public cloud, but in this hybrid world, the private cloud is now the platform to drive your business and your innovation."
Tan said that enterprises need to simplify like VMware has. He noted that VMware went from more than 8,000 SKUs to 4 core offerings and broke down product silos. "Your success represents our success," said Tan.
It remains to be seen how Tan’s stump speech goes. The VMware Explore conference follows a turbulent 2024 for customers. When Broadcom completed the VMware acquisition it shifted to subscription-based pricing in a move that raised costs for enterprises.
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Nutanix has been able to add VMware customers, but acknowledged last quarter that Broadcom was responding with aggressive pricing. Hewlett Packard Enterprise also entered the virtualization space by building open-source kernel-based virtual machines into HPE Private Cloud, but that move will take time to play out. Rimini Street also offered VMware support for enterprises pondering next moves.
On Broadcom's fiscal second quarter conference call, Tan said that VMware's transition to a new model is on track, but Tan has had to pen a few blogs designed to allay customer fears. VMware revenue in the second quarter was $2.7 billion, up from $2.1 billion in the first quarter. Tan said the company has signed up nearly 3,000 of its largest 10,000 customers to deals, mostly multi-year contracts.
Tan's talk at VMware Explore lands with a bevy of product updates revolving around VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).
Here's a look at the news announced at Explore.
VMware launched VCF 9, which is designed for private cloud deployments. VMware has argued that VCF will lower total cost of ownership even as customers have cringed about pricing changes. VCF 9 will include the following:
- A self-service cloud portal for provisioning services designed to consolidate management consoles. Integrated workflows will also combine operations and automation tasks and include analytics.
- VCF Import is expanded for VCF. Broadcom will enable VCF to import VMware NSX, VMware vDefend, VMware Avi Load Balancer and storage topologies into existing VCF environments. Broadcom is bolstering VCF Import given that much of its base is on these older versions of software.
- Advanced memory tiering with NVMe, which will give VCF the ability to handle AI databases, workloads and analytics. Memory tiering with NVMe cuts latency and boosts throughput.
- VMware also will add VCF Multi-Tenancy to VCF. Those features were previously in VMware Cloud Director. Native VPC Deployment with networking-as-a-service will also be added along with unified security management and the ability to adopt Nvidia-powered genAI deployments.
VMware outlined a series of edge product portfolio enhancements for AI workloads. VMware combined fixed wireless access and satellite connection support for the VMware VeloCloud Edge 710, VMware VeloCloud Edge 720 and 740 appliances. VMware VeloCloud SASE will be secured by Symantec. In addition, VMware added a series of enhancements to its VMware Edge Compute Stack.
VMWare launched Tanzu Platform 10 with a focus on genAI workloads. VMware also rolled out Tanzu AI Solutions, a set of tools to deliver genAI applications. Tanzu Platform 10 is designed to ride shotgun with VCF and features the following:
- Experiences that rhyme with Cloud Foundry for developers using Kubernetes.
- Better app-to-platform visibility.
- Services to connect apps to middleware and databases.
- Spring-based application security.
- Frameworks and observability features for genAI applications.
Hitachi Vantara and Broadcom launched a series of integrated systems for private and hybrid cloud deployments. The partnership integrates Hitachi Vantara's Unified Compute Platform (UCP) RS with VMware Cloud Foundation powered by Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform One arrays. According to the companies, the integrated systems provide faster time to value, flexible deployment options and simplified management
