Broadcom has a clear strategy with VMware, and it’s taking steps that VMware itself has refused to take in recent years. Simplifying the portfolio and integrating products as much as possible. Additionally, the necessary innovation is forthcoming. The bottom line is that VMware is continually improving, although not for everyone, and it’s evident that some friction still remains from time to time.
This year, we were once again guests at VMware Explore, no longer in Barcelona, as that edition no longer exists, but in Las Vegas. This is quite remarkable, as the European edition of VMware Explore was significantly larger than the American edition.
There has been considerable commotion surrounding VMware following its acquisition by Broadcom, with small and medium-sized businesses in Europe in particular expressing dissatisfaction with the steps taken. Most organizations now seem to have accepted VMware’s new strategy. We must admit that this strategy is not entirely unfavorable. The new solutions are very clear, offering an all-in solution for a private cloud, but the target group is in the higher mid-range and enterprise organizations. All organizations below that will be looking for an alternative.
Read also: Navigating VMware’s transformation under Broadcom
The future of VMware is VCF9
It was already clear last year that VMware Cloud Foundation was going to be the most important product in the portfolio. Broadcom has consolidated hundreds of SKUs of different products. There are still a few products to choose from. We have heard from SoftwareOne that it used to take six months for a sales representative to prepare a quote for VMware, because the price list was so complex.
Those days are over, as are the days when it was impossible to tell the products apart. Back then, the names of the products were changed every year, and, in addition to the portfolio, they also had Project X, Y, and Z.
Now, everything revolves around VCF 9, the latest version of VMware Cloud Foundation, which integrates all components and products. Virtualization, containers, NSX, vSAN, automation, and even Private AI Services are now included in VCF 9.
Fast and simple
What is much more important, however, is that Broadcom has opted for simplicity. The days when the entire IT team had to attend a VMware training every year are behind us. You can still obtain accreditations, but you can arrange almost everything with just a few clicks from the web console. NSX offers network security and segmentation, which can be confusing in terms of configuration. Now VMware has opted to create a complete virtual private cloud with just two clicks. All complex network configurations are automated and moved to the background. The same applies to patching VMware instances. Previously, this task required an IT manager’s weekend, but now it can be completed silently and automatically in the background without requiring system restarts. Installing updates without rebooting may not sound like a valuable innovation in 2025, but VMware wasn’t there yet. Now it is. The same applies to object storage. After all these years, vSAN has finally added support for object storage, in addition to volume (block) and file storage.
Automation plays a major role
VMware is also focusing heavily on more automation. IT administrators should have less work managing infrastructure, and developers should have more freedom to focus on actual application development. That is why there is a strong focus on automation via GitOps. The built-in CI/CD pipelines automatically provide new deployments when a Git repository is updated.
Additionally, VMware policies and configurations are now converted into code and stored in Git. This allows developers to easily continue building applications, with policies automatically applied to new containers. Everything is focused on automation and self-service to minimize hindrance to the developer’s work.
Developers can quickly create new containers and databases without relying on tickets to operations.
Monitoring via new dashboards
Giving developers more freedom is certainly fine. At the same time, the IT manager responsible for maintaining the infrastructure should not be sidelined. To this end, VMware is introducing new dashboards that display exactly how healthy the infrastructure is, how the hardware is being utilized, where the limits are, and any warnings of potential issues. All of this is done from the same overview. VMware is also becoming increasingly capable of performing more tasks on its own; for example, the efficient distribution of workloads across available infrastructure is fully automated.
Support for and by AI
VMware is also making great strides with AI. For example, there will be support for the MCP protocol, allowing AI agents to communicate with the infrastructure. There is also a VCF Intelligent Assistant that can help IT administrators analyze problems and provide information from documentation. This allows problems with the infrastructure or applications to be resolved much more quickly. For example, if there is a problem with the connection between two endpoints, several factors may be contributing to the issue. AI can perform a preliminary analysis and rule out certain issues or point to the root cause. For example, a port that is blocked in the firewall. This eliminates the need for the IT administrator to search for the cause themselves.
Private AI Services
Private AI Services will become increasingly important in the coming years. These services enable the deployment of AI models on VCF 9. VMware is already quite advanced in this area, with a model gallery where various models can be downloaded and run locally in the private cloud. The behavior of the models can also be checked and verified in advance.
The final execution of a model on VCF 9 can also be done in multi-tenant mode. A single model can be made available to multiple tenants, with the tenants’ data remaining completely separate. Vmotion has also been made suitable for AI, so that in the event of a failure, the AI models or GPU workloads remain available by automatically moving them in the background to infrastructure without failure.
VMware has everything in-house to run AI workloads securely in the private cloud. This is something that is on the wish list of many large organizations.
When it comes to hardware, VMware customers can turn to Nvidia, AMD, and Intel. All hardware is supported and, as you would expect from a good virtualization player, applications do not need to be modified when the underlying hardware changes.
VMware is making great strides, but there are still some rough edges
All in all, Broadcom is making great strides with VMware. However, there are still some rough edges. Broadcom is targeting the higher segment, where it is currently very successful. The figures presented by Broadcom are good.
Nevertheless, there are a huge number of companies and partners in Europe that are in the mid-range segment or below, for whom VMware has become unaffordable or unfeasible. That is unfortunate, but Broadcom claims that the number of customers leaving is not as high as might be expected. Based on our experiences and discussions, however, the big move has yet to begin. A well-integrated VMware environment requires careful planning and extensive testing.
Public cloud
VMware also indicates that its private cloud offering now resonates much better in the public cloud. According to Broadcom, revenue from VMware solutions has increased by 40 percent. In 2022, we had to conclude that VMware on AWS was a big flop, with growth figures of up to 500 VMs per month. Although VMware is growing in the public cloud, the focus seems to be more on the private cloud on-premises. Some customers will run a small portion of their workloads in the public cloud, or as a flexible shell, but we don’t see it becoming a significant trend.
If customers want to run Private AI Services not only on-premises, but also want a flexible shell for this, they can only turn to local VMware partners. VMware’s private AI services will not be available in the public cloud.
Nevertheless, the three major clouds seem to take VMware very seriously, with AWS, Google, and Microsoft all being main sponsors of the VMware event. It may also be for their own gain, as all parties are actually playing a double game. All three are trying to lure VMware customers away and migrate them to their native cloud solutions. Microsoft even sent out a press release at the start of this event to announce a new migration tool from VMware to HyperV. That is extremely controversial.
Many of the statements made by Broadcom executives ultimately concern on-premises solutions. The public cloud remains the primary competition. The focus, including during this event, seems to be 80 percent on on-premises data centers, even though many organizations see the public and private cloud as an ideal mix.
Conclusion
Broadcom has received considerable criticism surrounding its acquisition of VMware. Nevertheless, they have succeeded in doing what VMware failed to do in previous years. Creating a clear portfolio in which everything is integrated, innovating with new solutions, a better public cloud strategy, but a strong focus on on-premises.
However, it is no longer accessible to everyone. The integration of all these solutions in VCF 9 has made that product a lot more comprehensive and expensive. For some mid-market organizations, VMware has become too expensive in many cases. Meanwhile, Broadcom is focusing primarily on larger organizations that have the resources and can reap the benefits of the new VCF 9. That is where VMware can still really grow.
Anything below that level needs to be analyzed to determine whether the extra capabilities, automation, and AI outweigh the higher costs. According to VMware, the TCO is significantly lower than the competition. Of course, they all say that.
The alternative is to switch to Nutanix or HPE VME. This will become clearer in the coming year, with customers who want to migrate mainly using 2025 as the year for planning and 2026 as the year for migrations. We admire the steps VMware is taking and are curious to see if it can continue to grow.