Companies chasing innovation are often forced into compromise. Public cloud delivers speed and scale, but at the cost of visibility, control and sometimes even sovereignty. On-prem environments offer stability but struggle to keep pace with modern demands, especially as AI workloads and data complexity surge. Enter the private cloud — a middle path that promises both flexibility and governance, with infrastructure designed for control and scalability.

Broadcom’s new VMware Cloud Foundation 9 builds on this idea, aiming to eliminate the either/or tradeoff. Built as a single platform spanning data centers, edge and managed infrastructure, it combines the agility of public cloud with the security, governance and cost benefits of private infrastructure. The University of Bristol is experiencing this shift in transformative, hands-on ways that empower both staff and students, according to Keith Woolley (pictured), chief digital and information officer at the University of Bristol.

“One of the things that was really important to me was to be able to change a word in a sentence,” he told theCUBE. “The word I wanted to change was ‘or.’ We used to be able to build labs that could do one thing or another. Now, we build labs that can do whatever we want. It’s an ‘and’ statement.”

Woolley and Simon Chang, chief information officer of Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank Co. Ltd., spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier and Christophe Bertrand in separate interviews at the “Broadcom Delivers the Modern Private Cloud” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. Their discussions reflect how organizations in radically different sectors are turning to VCF to improve operational consistency, modernize infrastructure and meet rising demands without compromising control or compliance (* Disclosure below.)

Balancing academic demands with modern IT flexibility

At the University of Bristol, digital transformation means preparing for the unknown. With 32,000 students and 7,000 staff, the institution balances education and research equally across its billion-dollar enterprise. That dual focus drives its IT strategy, and its need for an adaptive platform that can flex in all directions, according to Woolley.

“It’s a cross-platform, what’s called a 50/50 university,” he said. “We have about 32,000 students, 7,000 staff, and we’re working around 50/50 on the education to research capability. We’re a billion-dollar enterprise, so we’ve got a large-scale IT infrastructure, and we are one of the major partners now for national infrastructure for AI in the U.K. and in Europe.”

The University looked to private cloud not just for cost efficiency, but for long-term flexibility and control. Hyperscale environments made budgeting unpredictable, and sovereignty requirements added further complexity. VCF provided a model the University could manage on its own terms while scaling to meet evolving research and compliance demands, according to Woolley.

“I needed a secure and cost-optimized environment,” he said. “I couldn’t be in a hyperscale environment where I didn’t know from day to day what my cost model may be. Private cloud gives me both.”

Automation changed everything for the University of Bristol’s digital department, according to Woolley. Before adopting VCF, academics viewed it as too slow and expensive to meet research needs. Broadcom’s platform gave researchers self-service access to compute environments, drastically improving time to research and elevating the team’s strategic value.

“One of the first things that happened with VCF was our capability to automate,” Woolley said. “We’ve now put the technology in the hands of our academics through scripting. They go to a portal, they subscribe to a build, and they can build the services that they need when they need them in minutes. Our time to research is significantly decreased and our value model in our research has increased substantially.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “Broadcom Delivers the Modern Private Cloud” event:

A unified infrastructure foundation for hybrid and private cloud agility

Faced with regulatory limits on public cloud use, Taipei Fubon Bank turned to VMware Cloud Foundation to build a modern private cloud that could match the flexibility and speed of hyperscalers without leaving Taiwan’s borders. Migrating to a fully virtualized environment enabled the bank to consolidate physical infrastructure, save on energy costs and space, and significantly simplify management overhead, according to Chang.

“We have been able to move around the 2,400 virtual machines,” he said. “Almost over 70% of our applications are all in this new virtualized environment right now, which is a really big accomplishment.”

To support hybrid operations, the bank built a unified management layer that spans on-prem, private cloud and future public cloud deployments. That consistency gives Taipei Fubon a head start as the country’s regulations evolve and more financial institutions explore cloud adoption, Chang added.

“I can use my single interface and single management tool,” he said. “I can measure all my on-premise, my legacy environment, my new private cloud environment, and also my future public cloud environments.”

The strategy doesn’t stop at infrastructure. Chang sees generative AI as a rapidly changing field with no one-size-fits-all solution. Taipei Fubon is investing in private AI models that allow teams to quickly test and swap out tools for everything from audio processing to customer support — all without rebuilding infrastructure each time. These private AI capabilities will complement the bank’s expanding use of public cloud resources over the next two years.

“The private AI is actually very, very suitable for our needs,” he said. “You can really build up the whole private AI infrastructure, and you can really quickly swap in and out different models. That’s why we are going to spend some time and some effort into understanding and then try to merge that into our existing infrastructures.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the “Broadcom Delivers the Modern Private Cloud” event:

To watch more of theCUBE’s coverage of the “Broadcom Delivers the Modern Private Cloud” event, here’s our complete event video playlist:

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

Photo: SiliconANGLE