Over the past year, the operational word for virtualization giant VMware’s strategic approach has been “private.”

From the announcement of its Private AI initiative last August to the unveiling of the latest version of VMware Cloud Foundation today as an innovation for private cloud deployment, the Broadcom Inc.-owned VMware has made it clear where it envisions the future of enterprise computing. And it’s not in the public cloud.

“Public cloud is much more expensive than you can ever expect,” Hock Tan, president and chief executive officer of Broadcom, said today in his keynote remarks at VMware Explore in Las Vegas. “In this hybrid world, the private cloud is now the platform to drive your business and innovation. The future of the enterprise is private. It’s about staying on-prem and in control.”

Enhancements for VMware Cloud Foundation

Since purchasing VMware in 2023, Broadcom has reshaped the narrative around the company’s future direction. It has streamlined its divisions and product lines while focusing on simplifying VMware’s offerings.

Today’s VCF announcements included a self-service cloud portal for provisioning services and a reduction in management consoles from more than a dozen to just one. Newly integrated workflows are designed to help users transition more easily between operations and automation tasks, a nod to Broadcom’s interest in eliminating enterprise siloes.

“You are very siloed… you are so screwed because silos don’t work well together,” Tan said. “We will enable you to deploy as a full stack to virtualize your entire data center. It’s resilient, it’s secure and it costs much less than the public cloud.”

Much of the Explore keynote session was devoted to the enhancements for VCF, seen by Broadcom as central to its VMware strategy. Broadcom has consolidated VCF features such as high-end vSAN, Kubernetes and log management into a packaged bundle. The most recent offerings include a new advanced memory tiering capability to reduce latency, plus an expansion of vDefend protection and detection capabilities for large, complex VCF environments.

“We can do better, and we have, and it is VCF,” Paul Turner, vice president of products for the VCF division at Broadcom, said during his keynote remarks. “VCF is a strategic choice to you to deliver a cloud platform for your business”

Missing from today’s news surrounding VCF was a timetable for release. Asked about the schedule in a post-keynote briefing for the media, Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager for VCF at Broadcom, could not provide a precise timeline, other than to explain that “it should happen in the regular cycle we have for major releases.”

New features for Tanzu and Private AI

Another key focus for VMware at Explore centered on the latest release of Tanzu, used by organizations to build, run and manage cloud-native applications. Tanzu 10 offers automated secure container builds and easier paths for developers to deploy code and scale up app distributions.

The latest Tanzu enhancements are designed to accelerate intelligent application delivery in the private cloud. Tanzu 10 offers enhanced governance and operational efficiency while reducing complexity for development teams.

“Enterprises have an almost insatiable demand for accelerating application delivery,” James Watters, senior director of R&D for Broadcom’s Tanzu Division, said in an exclusive interview with SiliconANGLE. “We had an opportunity with the Tanzu platform to accelerate their application delivery and provide a strong security posture.”

Not to be forgotten in the announcements around VCF and Tanzu was the VMware Private AI Foundation offering with Nvidia Corp. Initially unveiled at Explore a year ago, Private AI is a full-stack platform with generative artificial intelligence software and the tools for building, training and deploying AI models.

Private AI was built on VCF and became generally available in May. Among VMware’s announcements today was the launch of a new repository to enable more secure large language models and automation tools for accelerated deployment. In a post-keynote briefing for the media and analysts, Chris Wolf, global head of AI and advanced services at Broadcom, indicated that Private AI is finding traction among customers interested in maximizing Nvidia’s processors.

“This is the fastest-growing product I have ever seen in my career,” Wolf said. “We’re absolutely seeing demand for bringing AI models to the data. It’s getting the most utilization out of your GPUs.”

Addressing cost concerns

In the post-acquisition environment surrounding VMware and its announcements during 2024, there’s still a relevant question: Will organizations still be able to afford what VMware is offering?

An increase in price, characterized by SiliconANGLE Research Analyst Dave Vellante as the “Broadcom tax,” has injected a note of uncertainty around VMware’s future course. Company executives appeared mindful of this at Explore, with noticeable references to cost savings and financial benefits sprinkled throughout the presentations today.

Asked directly about price increases during his briefing with the media, Prasad noted that Broadcom’s decision to move VMware from a perpetual license to a subscription model would inevitably result in a rise in cost for some. Yet he also told the gathering that the VCF subscription price had been cut in half, from $700 per core to $350.

Behind the pushback against cost concerns by VMware executives is a key distinction on how the company sees its evolving role in the enterprise world. Whether it’s public cloud or private, VMware is still an infrastructure provider, and it’s banking that the firm’s customers have not forgotten this.

“Every company five years ago said they were moving all their workloads to the public cloud,” said Prasad in his media briefing. “Now CEOs are coming to me and asking why they are spending so much money on the public cloud. They are taking a much more balanced approach on where they put their workloads. It is about the private infrastructure of the customer. Our private cloud is consistent as one operating layer irrespective of where the infrastructure is sitting.”

Photo: Mark Albertson/SiliconANGLE