VMware Explore 2025 – Day 2 Recap

Private Cloud is Back — and It’s Better Than Ever

Day 2 of VMware Explore 2025 wasn’t just about product announcements; it was about VMware’s bold new vision for the private cloud. The message was clear: private cloud is no longer a compromise. It’s more secure, more cost-effective, and more controllable than public cloud alternatives.
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At the heart of this vision is VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 (VCF 9), now delivered as a single SKU. That means no more piecing together separate licenses or tools — one package covers compute, networking, storage, and security. For IT leaders, it simplifies procurement and operations, while giving developers the modern, integrated environment they need.

Real Stories, Real Impact

Grinnell Mutual
For Grinnell Mutual’s small 17-person IT team in rural Iowa, VCF wasn’t just another upgrade — it was a lifeline. By replacing discrete storage with vSAN, they saved nearly $1M at renewal. More importantly, VCF unified their siloed teams and gave them the same platform power as global enterprises. “It’s not too big for us,” their IT director shared, “VCF scaled perfectly to our small but mighty team.”

Barclays
For Barclays, the story was about developer velocity. With VCF 9, their engineers can spin up cloud environments on demand, tearing them down just as quickly. This elasticity means they can now host AI workloads on-prem, with the same agility they’d expect from public cloud. “For the first time, our engineers will have a public cloud-like experience on private infrastructure,” said their CTO.

​Walmart
Walmart confirmed it is standardizing on VCF globally, naming Broadcom its strategic virtualization partner. This isn’t just about consolidation — it’s about creating a consistent cloud operating model across thousands of distributed sites.

What’s New in VCF 9

To accelerate developers and AI adoption, VMware announced new features:

• Native Kubernetes (fully CNCF-compliant) with lifecycle management.
• Database-as-a-Service for Postgres, MySQL, and SQL Server.
• Built-in GitOps with ArgoCD for CI/CD pipelines.
• Istio service mesh + policy-as-code for governance and security.
• Ubuntu integration with chisel containers — lightweight, hardened, GPU-ready images for AI workloads

These capabilities are what VMware means by AI-native: the ability to build, run, and secure AI workloads on-prem, keeping sensitive data and models under enterprise control.

Security and Compliance Without Slowing Down

Enterprises don’t just need speed — they need trust. VMware announced the Advanced Cyber Compliance SKU, powered by SaltStack:

• Continuous compliance enforcement (detect and fix drift automatically).
• Proactive analysis to spot risks before they spread.
• Built-in ransomware recovery with clean snapshot hydration.

This makes VCF one of the few platforms that can balance developer agility with regulator-grade compliance.

Expanding the Ecosystem

Canonical partnership → Ubuntu as the enterprise container OS for VCF, complete with GPU drivers and long-term support.

AMD Instinct GPUs → extending VMware’s long CPU partnership into the AI GPU space.

NVIDIA partnership → continued deep integration for GPU + networking in AI-native data centers.

Key Takeaways

Day 2 delivered a clear message:

• Private Cloud 2.0 is here — integrated, elastic, and AI-ready.
• AI-native by design → from hardened containers to Private AI services.
• Compliance at speed → no more trade-offs between agility and governance.
• Proven in the real world → from Grinnell’s 17-person team to Barclays’ global AI push to Walmart’s massive retail footprint.

What do you think — is private cloud really back and better than ever?

• Share your thoughts in the comments.