VMware Explore 2024: Pioneering the Private Cloud Revolution

In this blog, I will recap the VMware Explore 2024 opening day general session which discusses the Shift to Private Cloud, Breaking Down IT Silos, and VMware Cloud Foundation Features.
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The general session kicked off with a keynote from Broadcom’s President & CEO Hok Tan. He shared how they are listening to customers and the feedback they are getting is that customers want VMware products to work better together. He says that the previous VMware CEOs and Board of Directors have pushed us towards the public cloud, which has caused us to suffer from the three Cs: Cost, Complexity, and Compliance. He argues that the public cloud is more expensive, more complex, and less compliant than an on-premises data center. He cites that 8 out of 10 CIOs are now bringing their workloads back to on-premises. The future of the enterprise is private. Private cloud, private AI, and powered by your own private data. The public cloud will only be used for elastic demand and burstable workloads.

He then discusses the challenges of the traditional three-tier architecture that we have been dealing with for years. He points out how these silos of compute, storage, and networking create complexity, inefficiency, and security risks. He contrasts this with the VMware Cloud Foundation approach, which integrates the three tiers into a single software-defined data center stack. VMware has also developed a comprehensive portfolio of services around this platform to enable customers to build their own private cloud. These services include containerization, security, edge, automation, disaster recovery, data, and now private AI. He compares this to having AWS on-premises.

Hok Tan concluded his keynote by reminding us of the three promises Broadcom made when they bought VMware: to simplify VMware, invest in innovation, and enhance the partner ecosystem. They reduced from 8,000 skews to 4 core offerings. However, I think they still have a lot to do to fulfill these promises.

Broadcom's Vice President of Products for VMware Cloud Foundation, Paul Turner, took the stage next. He echoed Hok Tan's point about silos and explained how they create extreme complexities. He gave examples of how life cycle management, route cause analysis, optimization, and security are all complicated by the three-tier environment.

He argued that to stay competitive and deliver applications securely and quickly, we need to break the IT silos and enable agile IT. He cited some statistics that show how the siloed IT model increases costs significantly. For example, day-to-day operations cost 42% more, physical server footprints cost 40% more, overall infrastructure costs 30% more, and costs per vm are 34% higher. He attributed these costs to the lack of commonality between the silos, such as single-sign-on, unified tagging, life cycle management, and common altering. He presented VMware Cloud Foundation as the solution to these problems, as it integrates compute, storage, network, automation, and operations into a single platform.
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He then delved into the three layers of the VMware Cloud Foundation platform and their benefits. The first layer is Automation and Operations, which provides central management of private cloud resources, such as capacity, life cycle, security, and compliance. The second layer is Modern Developer Interface, which enables agile application delivery through service catalogs, containerization, and AI and ML support. The third layer is Advanced Services, which offers additional features such as advanced firewalls and load balancing.

He also talked about the various deployment options that customers can choose from, thanks to the wide network of partners that support VMware Cloud Foundation. Customers can opt for different OEMs like Dell or HPE, or different public clouds like AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. Customers who prefer a managed service model can leverage the 300-plus partners who offer such services. Moreover, there are over 14,000 partners like CDW who can assist customers with the design, implementation, and adoption of the VCF platform and its ecosystem.

He introduced the new features of VMware Cloud Foundation 9, which include a new VCF operations console that simplifies the management of events, logs, and diagnostics. This enables faster troubleshooting and ensures continuous uptime. It also integrates with Skyline to provide fleet management, policy governance, and license management across the platform. Additionally, it offers more agility for areas such as multi-tenancy, workflow orchestration, and IaaS integration with Kubernetes, which are now part of the unified VCF platform.
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He concluded with an overview of the Advanced Services and the rich portfolio of services available under this category. These services can run on the VCF foundation and cover service domains such as Advanced Security, Data Services, Disaster Recovery, Container Operations, Edge Services, Load Balancing, Workload Automation, and Private AI.

As VMware Explore 2024 concludes its opening day, we are left with a clear vision of the future shaped by VMware's innovative solutions. The shift towards a private cloud-centric approach, the breaking down of IT silos, and the robust features of VMware Cloud Foundation 9 promise to redefine the landscape of cloud computing. With a simplified product offering, a commitment to innovation, and an enhanced partner ecosystem, VMware is poised to lead enterprises into a new era of efficiency, security, and agility. The journey towards a more unified and streamlined IT infrastructure is just beginning, and VMware is at the forefront, guiding the way with expertise and foresight. We look forward to seeing how these developments will unfold and the transformative impact they will have on businesses worldwide.