Broadcom Unveils Major Updates to VMware Portfolio at Explore 2024

At VMware Explore 2024 Aug. 26-29 in Las Vegas, Broadcom announced significant updates to its VMware product lines, focusing on enhancing private cloud capabilities, accelerating intelligent application delivery, and boosting enterprise edge AI readiness.

These updates collectively address critical challenges in private cloud deployment, application development, and edge computing.

Among the new product updates are:

These announcements come in the wake of Broadcom's recent acquisition of VMware, signaling a strong commitment to innovation across the VMware portfolio. 

"You are telling us you want our products to work better and be more user-friendly. You want them to actually work together. You are asking us, 'Roll up your sleeves, do the hard work,'" Hock Tan, president and CEO of Broadcom, said during the opening keynote at VMware Explore 2024. "That's exactly what we've done."

Updating Private Cloud with VMware Cloud Foundation 9

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 is the centerpiece of Broadcom's announcements, designed to simplify the deployment, consumption, and operations of secure, cost-effective private clouds.

Related:Migrating From VMware: Guide to a Successful Transition

Tan explained that VCF combines multiple VMware products, including ESX, vSphere, VSAN, NSX, and vRealize.

"We have made it all work together very well, and we will enable you — and we have enabled you — in many cases to deploy it as a full stack, to virtualize your entire data center — in fact, to create a single platform," Tan said.  

Key innovations in VCF 9 include:

Accelerating Intelligent Application Delivery with Tanzu Platform 10

Complementing VCF 9, Broadcom introduced VMware Tanzu Platform 10 at VMware Explore 2024.

Tanzu is VMware's Kubernetes cloud-native application platform based on the open source Kubernetes container orchestration technology. VMware acquired much of the original Tanzu platform through its 2018 acquisition of Heptio, which was a startup led by some of the original founders of Kubernetes at Google.

Related:How to Leverage Your VMware Migration to Redesign Your Infrastructure Architecture

"Tanzu Platform 10 brings a rich set of capabilities for platform engineering teams to drive application delivery in an AI-ready, self-managed fashion," Valentina Alaria, director of technology product management at Broadcom, said during a VMware Explore session.

Among the new features in Tanzu platform 10:

Empowering Edge AI with Software-Defined Edge Enhancements

Recognizing the growing importance of edge computing and AI workloads, Broadcom unveiled significant developments in its Software-Defined Edge portfolio.

The foundational element of the portfolio is VMware's VeloCloud technology. VMware acquired SD-WAN vendor VeloCloud in 2017 and has been steadily expanding the technology ever since. The new updates announced at VMware Explore 2024 focus on edge enablement and AI.

"You've heard a lot about AI, and VeloCloud is AI-ready," Sanjay Uppal, vice president and general manager of Broadcom's Software-Defined Edge Division, said during a VMware Explore 2024 session. "With almost half a million endpoints that we've already deployed and 5 trillion data points that we see every year, we can recognize the details of AI traffic."

VeloCloud updates that support Edge AI include:

Private Cloud Is the Big Broadcom Bet

The big bet that Broadcom is making with its overall VMware strategy is that the future of the cloud is private.

While in years past VMware has attempted public cloud services, that's not the direction the company has under Broadcom's leadership. Tan emphasized during his keynote that in his view the future of the enterprises is private cloud, fueled by private AI and data. For him, it's all about staying on-premises and in control.

"Of course, you continue using the public cloud for elastic demand and busting workloads," Tan said. "But in this hybrid world, the private cloud is now the platform to drive your business and your innovation, and we have work to do to make that happen."