VMware Explore: ‘The Future of the Enterprise is Private Cloud and AI’

No, that's not a typo -- it really says private cloud. VMware Explore kicked off in Las Vegas this week, and during the opening keynote, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan noted that, a decade ago, organizations "fell in love with the notion of the public cloud." But 10 years later, he said, organizations are now wrestling with what he called the three Cs of public cloud PTSD: Costs, complexity and compliance.

"Public Cloud is much more expensive, more so than you ever expected. Complexity -- another platform means another extra layer for you to manage. And compliance; you have regulatory policy requirements. It's more complex, it's more expensive and compliance is hard," Tan told attendees. He said many CIOs are now moving their workloads back on-premises to deal with these three Cs, which represents a huge change, but also a huge opportunity.

"Here's my view," Tan said. "The future of the enterprise is private. Private cloud, private AI fueled by your own private data. It's about staying on-premises and in control. Of course, you'll continue using the public cloud for elastic demand and bursting workloads, but in this hybrid world, the private cloud is now the platform to drive your business and your innovation, and we have work to do to make that happen."

To that end, VMware by Broadcom is focusing on VMware Cloud Foundation as the answer to these problems, Tan said. VCF will accelerate customers’ transition from siloed IT architectures to a unified and integrated private cloud platform that lowers cost and risk, Tan said. VMware Cloud Foundation 9 doesn't have a specific release date yet, but the company said it will follow its regular release schedule and partners and customers can expect a standard upgrade path from earlier versions.

"In VMware, we believe we have the solution. We're taking the software we have grown to trust and love, ESX, vSphere, VSAN, NSX and vRealize. We have made it all work together and we will enable you to deploy it as a full stack, to virtualize your entire data center and create a single platform: VMware Cloud Foundation, or VCF. It's resilient, it's secure, and it costs much less than public cloud ... we have security, we have disaster recovery, automation, ransomware, orchestration and now private AI, a product just released three months ago. And this rich catalog of services runs on top of VCF," he said.

Tan said he believed Broadcom had delivered on its promises to simplify VMware by consolidating 8,000 SKUs to four, investing in better integration and interoperability and expanding the partner ecosystem and channel organization.

In other news from VMware Explore day one, Broadcom also announced developments across its software-defined edge product portfolio to enable enterprises to support Edge AI workloads via new and enhanced connectivity, deployment and lifecycle management capabilities. These include:

Broadcom also announced VMware Tanzu Platform 10, its cloud-native application platform that accelerates software delivery, enhances governance and operational efficiency while reducing toil and complexity for development teams, the company said. The company also introduced Tanzu AI Solutions, a set of capabilities within Tanzu Platform that help application teams deliver generative AI-powered, intelligent applications quickly, safely and at scale. Tanzu Platform 10 and VMware Cloud Foundation together can help accelerate organizations' move to a complete private cloud with a self-configuring setup experience and support for air-gapped environments, Broadcom said.

What did you see, hear, learn about at VMware Explore today? Drop me a line and let me know!