Earlier this year, news hit that computer chipmaker Broadcom Inc. was negotiating to buy the virtualization software giant VMware Inc., a move that won provisional approval in the United Kingdom in July.

“Broadcom’s planned $61 billion acquisition of VMware will mark yet another new era for the virtualization leader, a mere seven months after finally getting spun out as a fully independent company by Dell Technologies Inc.,” wrote theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante in a recent edition of his Breaking Analysis series.

There is speculation, however, surrounding Broadcom CEO Hock Tan’s plans to keep VMware intact and “not break it down to its bare bones,” according to theCUBE’s John Furrier, during a recent theCUBE Pod analysis. “He’s buying the vision of supercloud, basically, and cross-cloud services, which is cloud-native,” Furrier added. 

Tan has weighed in himself, saying, “Once the acquisition is complete, we will continue to invest in and further develop VMware’s innovative product portfolio, tapping into our shared R&D commitment and expertise. And, we will use our collective experience with VMware’s partners and users to unlock new customer value and #growth.”

TheCUBE’s coverage of the upcoming VMware Explore event, hosted by Vellante and Furrier, along with industry analysts Lisa Martin and Rob Strechay, will explore the latest in virtualization as VMware rethinks cross-cloud computing.

“For VMware, this means a dramatically different operating model, with financial performance and shareholder value creation as the dominant and perhaps sole agenda,” said Vellante.

Join theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio Aug. 22-24 for exclusive coverage of the VMware Explore 2023 event, as Vellante, Furrier and Martin talk with industry professionals and unpack what the “rethink” means for the company’s customers and how the Broadcom acquisition fits into the equation. (* Disclosure below.)

Multicloud offerings

Despite the company finding itself under regulatory pressure amid the Broadcom acquisition, VMware did report strong results in June. Revenue for the first quarter was $3.28 billion, an increase of 6% from the first quarter of fiscal 2023.

“This past quarter we demonstrated momentum and engagement with our customers and partners as we continue to help them transform their businesses and unlock the full potential of multicloud,” VMware Chief Executive Officer Raghu Raghuram said in a statement at the time of the results being posted.

The company has also spent the first half of 2023 rolling out a number of new initiatives. In June, VMware said it had formed an alliance with chipmakers Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., as well as the RISC-V Keystone community, with an eye on accelerating confidential computing.

“Confidential computing has the potential to secure workloads no matter where they run, including in multicloud and edge settings,” said VMware Chief Technology Officer Kit Colbert at the time of the announcement.

VMware has also long partnered with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. In June, the company discussed the benefits of its collaboration to bring an HPE GreenLake for VMware Cloud Foundation solution, based on a cloud operating model.

“With HPE being able to deliver an integrated solution with VMware Cloud Foundation and GreenLake, we can offer customers a performant, secure and economical solution on-premises,” Dave McGraw, vice president of the Office of the CTO at VMware, told theCUBE. “Delivering local cloud services, supporting infrastructure as a service and also application development on-premises as well becomes a very important component of a supercloud strategy going forward.”

Another partnership with Dell and AT&T Inc. saw the rollout of a new edge computing offering for enterprises in April, known as the AT&T MEC with Dell APEX. At VMware Explore, the company sees a few key areas of focus, according to Colbert.

“We do see the GenAI and large language model space as a new type of application. And yet, at the same time, while it does require some new sets of capabilities … it does leverage a lot of the existing things that are already out there,” he said during a recent exclusive interview on theCUBE. “You need infrastructure that’s optimized for these sort of applications.”

That poses some big questions, according to Colbert. How does one manage costs across all these locations? How does one do governance and automation, and how does one deal with security and networking?

“A lot of our current product portfolio, we believe, we can bring to bear to support customers doing large language models. And we want to do that, of course, across cloud,” he said. “A big focus for us starting off is how do we create a simple turnkey solution for on-premises environments? Because again, this is one thing we hear from customers, and we hear that there aren’t good, simple, cost-effective solutions there. So, you’re going to see a big focus from us there.”

A look ahead

Previously dubbed VMworld, VMware Explore comes at a time when there’s a big evolution taking place around what’s often referred to as supercloud, according to Furrier.

“You look at virtual machines, for instance. VMworld is an event that’s happened over and over again, and now it’s called VMware Explore,” Furrier said during a recent episode of theCUBE podcast. “Getting bought by Broadcom, you’re going to see that entire generation of IT ops, practitioners evolve and get re-skilled into cloud operations.”

When it comes to VMware’s alliance focused on confidential computing, Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. previously told SiliconANGLE that given the company’s reputation as an industry leader in virtual machines — which power the vast majority of application workloads — it was encouraging to see VMware taking the lead in promoting confidential computing.

“Confidential computing has the potential to secure workloads no matter where they run, including in multicloud and edge settings,” Mueller said. “The challenge has been to help customers adopt and implement the standard with ease. The collective efforts of the growing ecosystem of contributors to Certifier Framework will help bring those benefits to bear to ISVs, enterprise customers and sovereign cloud providers, enabling them to use this emerging technology more easily and effectively.”

Still, VMware Explore will be a chance for theCUBE analysts to dive deep into what role VMware will play in Broadcom’s future, and vice versa. It will also be a chance to spend time discussing the company’s latest revolution for cross-cloud, multicloud computing. For customers, Broadcom’s acquisition of the company will mean a more focused portfolio, less aspirational vision pitches and most certainly higher prices, according to Vellante.

“VMware has become a heavy lift. As such, it’s a perfect acquisition target for Broadcom. And we refer to the ‘VMware beast,’ because VMware is just that … a beast. It’s ubiquitous. It is an epic software platform that EMC couldn’t control,” Vellante wrote in a recent Breaking Analysis. “Dell used it as a piggy bank but really didn’t change its operating model. Broadcom 100% will.”

TheCUBE will provide full coverage of the VMware Explore 2023 event to capture all the breaking news and provide analyst-driven commentary on what comes next for the company. You can follow theCUBE’s wall-to-wall coverage for firsthand insights.

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of the VMware Explore event from August 22 to 24. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s event coverage on-demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of the VMware Explore event, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

SiliconANGLE also has analyst deep dives in our Breaking Analysis podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

Guests

During the VMware Explore event, theCUBE analysts will talk with industry professionals about what’s next in virtualization, and for VMware itself. Stay tuned for our complete guest list.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VMware Explore 2023. Neither VMware Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: SiliconANGLE