For the second day of #CFD21 we were joined by VMware by Broadcom to help us understand some of the new solutions they are building for a private cloud vendor. VMware and Broadcom partnership are reaching to the first year of working together since the acquisition. I remember a lot of folks in November thinking about how they are joining together and what that entails for customer. After a year I think the answer to that is quite direct, and clear. Private cloud, within the customers hands instead of driving them to a cloud provider outside of the engineerings hands.

The story after this acquisition is to simplify the many different licenses that VMware had, from NSX, VSAN, vRealize, Tanzu, and many other software licenses. The goal was to combine the product into a single product. The combination of licenses is not being moved to a new single software release. Meaning once all the functionality is all under the same software, then updates are all under the same software upgrade, and management.

“There is no boundaries keeping customers from purchasing VCF vs VVF. This has been addressed by the CEO of the company.”

I’d like to see where this blog is, because I’ve ran into this several times trying to figure out which to solve for customers. Lots of groups out there are being told that they can only sell VCF to specific customers. If this is true then this is a good direction that Broadcom is taking and should be touted and screamed from the rooftops.

Prashanth spoke specifically to what private cloud is for VMware, and stated that VMware does not see private cloud as *JUST* on-premises datacenter, but a configuration of all the individual “clouds” being used by an organization. The goal behind VCF is to integrate the same platform of VCF at all deployment locations. See below:

Good to see the OEMs listed here. In fact, the hardware vendors clashed after the first integration of their partnerships with Broadcom, but now it’s getting better with them working together again. Also the portability of VCF licensing, if true, is an amazing solution to migrate workloads to and from hyperscalers and back.

Conclusion:

From the business perspective the goal behind VMware and Broadcom is really a challenge without direct leadership and clear communication to customers. The meeting with VMware today was a good direction, and if they are able to engage, and execute, then they will be able to achieve a different perspective on VMware that we have not had in the last year. Today, we heard directly that they could have done different to help customers, and we heard VMware say it. The first year is behind us, perhaps the next year, could be the year we see a new VMware that customers can get behind again.