Broadcom Inc. announcement new capabilities for its VMware Cloud Foundation or VCF private cloud platform at this week’s show VMware Explore 2024 in Barcelonafocusing on the company’s focus on the growing adoption of artificial intelligence, national digital sovereignty and cyber resilience.

These factors have also caused businesses to re-evaluate their cloud strategies. Many CIOs have told me they are looking to expand their broader cloud strategies by making greater use of private cloud and, in some cases, bringing workloads back from an “as-a-service” model. to a private model, which offers more control.

The company also introduced ecosystem partnerships and modernization programs designed to accelerate the development of generative AI applications, cybersecurity initiatives and sovereign cloud adoption.

It is important to understand the nuances of VCF. Although it’s called “private cloud,” it doesn’t just mean on-premises, since customers can deploy the private cloud in their own data center, at the edge, or in a public cloud. Krish Prasad (pictured), Broadcom senior vice president and general manager of the VCF division, summed it up by saying the company was “enabling private cloud everywhere” with VCF. He then mentioned the new capabilities, saying that Broadcom is “unlocking the promise of AI in the enterprise, delivering new levels of organizational resilience, and meeting the privacy and digital sovereignty demands” of global customers.

At last week’s analyst briefing, Mark Chuang, senior director of Broadcom’s VCF division, said the company is “deploying continued innovation in areas that customers care about,” particularly AI and cyber. resilience.

Chuang added that Broadcom is expanding its private cloud platform to offer customers new ways to achieve resilience and choice. He said the goal is to help customers “get to value faster” in three ways:

• Gain an accurate understanding of their current situation
• Acceleration of deployment
• Ensure IT teams have the training necessary to execute

Fast return on investment for customers

“Based on data collected from deployed VCF customers, we see a 10-month payback period, up to 34% lower infrastructure costs and 61% faster deployment time for new loads. work,” Chuang said. “And when it comes to resolving data loss incidents, we see reports of 66% faster recovery and resolution. »

Technology and vision are key, but the real value of any solution lies in how it delivers results to customers. ABN AMRO is a Broadcom VCF customer seeing strong results from its deployments. The third largest Dutch bank has had to deal with rapidly changing customer expectations. Chuang said customers want more value-oriented services from their banks.

“That means moving from simple, standard checking and savings accounts to more personalized, self-service banking experiences and support,” he said. “The bank felt limited by the complexity of its existing technology environment. After extensive analysis, ABN AMRO decided to create a private cloud platform based on VCF and move away from its legacy managed service.

“ABN AMRO wanted greater control over its environment, freedom from the constraints of its existing expensive and inflexible agreement, robust management capabilities, and ultimately the freedom to run applications anywhere without the complexity of application rewrite,” Chuang explained. . “The impact they’ve seen is that developers are seeing the benefits of an automated service catalog and improved testing tools in sandboxes. Ultimately, the bank regains possession of its technology. It is now in a much stronger position to quickly provide better services to its customers.

VMware is able to achieve these results by offering VCF as a turnkey, validated solution. This is a playbook the company has used many times before, dating back to the joint “VCE” solution with Cisco Systems Inc. and EMC Corp. When a customer needs to assemble a complex solution, it always takes weeks or even months for fine-tuning and tuning time. The validated design eliminates much of the uncertainty.

VMware Tanzu Data Services for VCF

Broadcom also announced a new advanced service – VMware Tanzu Data Services – “to streamline the deployment, management and consumption of critical data services and enable faster application delivery, better data security and governance, and operational efficiency”. The company said data services provide “a modern way to store, manage and process data” that addresses the challenges faced when deploying microservices, serverless and other data architectures at scale. modern applications.

Improvements to cyber resilience, security and recovery

The company is also introducing VMware Live Recovery, which will support Google Cloud VMware Engine as an isolated recovery environment for VCF workloads for cyber and disaster recovery. This extends Live Recovery protection to GCVE sites as a source while enabling a “consistent, secure and simplified” experience for protecting VMware workloads running on-premises or in the cloud on GCVE.

Expand the reach of gen AI services with VMware Private AI

With generative AI quickly becoming a business necessity, Broadcom is expanding its Private AI strategy to support Microsoft’s Azure AI Video Indexer on VMware Private AI running on VCF and Azure VMware Solution. This is another example of Broadcom’s commitment to helping customers accelerate their VCF AI projects to value while enabling Azure AI Video Indexer to run anywhere, anytime. or the cloud deployment model.

Further modernization of the private cloud

Broadcom also announced additional investments in its Private Cloud Modernization Program, which helps customers navigate the private cloud with VCF. The company has introduced two new features:

• VMware Cloud Foundation Architect Certification is designed for individuals who can “conceptualize and design VCF solutions that meet both business and technical requirements.” In addition to validating an architect’s skills to design systems that include key functionalities such as availability, manageability, performance, recovery and security, it also highlights the importance of capacity planning, disaster recovery and scalability.
• Private Cloud Maturity and Optimization Tool for Partners enables partners to help their customers realize the many benefits of the private cloud as they move forward in this space. Partners now have access to the Private Cloud Framework, an assessment leading to a Private Cloud Maturity Index score for their customers, as well as prescriptive guidance from Broadcom. The company says that by leveraging this model, partners can “accelerate customer outcomes, deliver strategic account plans faster, and develop and deliver new services.”

Partners support national digital sovereignty

Broadcom announced that 50 VMware Cloud Service Providers now offer VCF-based sovereign cloud services, including 30 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Sovereign VCSP Partners meet Broadcom’s requirements for localization operations by a legal entity that “owns, operates and manages the sovereign cloud offering with full jurisdictional control, local data residency and lock-free portability.”

VCF includes specific features that meet sovereign cloud requirements, ranging from support for privacy-enhancing compute with Intel and AMD chipsets (confidential computing); Built-in data-at-rest protection with vSAN Encryption; Secure boot for ESXi hosts and encryption of vSphere virtual machines; comprehensive data services and compliance monitoring, alerting and reporting with VCF Operations.

Broadcom said VCSP sovereign clouds also support Bring Your Own Keys, giving customers “even more confidence that no one else, not even the CSP, can see or access their information without authorization.”

Why everything is important

That’s a lot of news from Broadcom and its VMware unit on several key fronts. But in the rapidly evolving world of AI, cloud services and security, the companies that succeed will be the first to offer the largest and most valuable products and services.

Broadcom has been selective about the areas of the VMware business it supports and invests in. Private cloud is an area that Broadcom appears to be “all in” on, as it favors a broad platform approach. AI will continue to attract customers to private clouds, and we are only in the very early stages of this wave. VMware customers should expect Broadcom to continue to invest in this area.

Zeus Kerravala is a principal analyst at ZK Research, a division of Kerravala Consulting. He wrote this article for SiliconANGLE.

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