What's Up with Tech?
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What's Up with Tech?
Why Companies Like Walmart Are Moving From Public Cloud to VCF
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The private cloud revolution is gaining momentum, with VMware's Virtual Cloud Foundation (VCF) emerging as the platform of choice for enterprises seeking alternatives to public cloud. In this enlightening conversation with Vijay Ramachandran, who leads product management for core infrastructure at Broadcom, we dive deep into the transformative innovations unveiled at VMware Explore
Storage technology has undergone remarkable evolution, with vSAN now featuring global deduplication that dramatically reduces costs. This software-defined approach, combined with high-performance capabilities, is driving organizations away from traditional hardware-based solutions. Meanwhile, the introduction of Virtual Private Clouds brings public cloud networking constructs on-premises, enabling sophisticated workload isolation without compromising control.
Security takes center stage with breakthrough cyber resiliency features that deliver automated ransomware recovery for on-premises deployments. The continuous compliance monitoring capabilities replace outdated point-in-time audits, allowing organizations to maintain verifiable compliance postures around the clock. With end-to-end encryption and platform hardening, VCF creates a security foundation that many find superior to public cloud alternatives.
Walmart's decision to standardize on VCF for their global edge and private cloud infrastructure validates the platform's enterprise readiness. This reflects a growing trend of organizations either repatriating workloads from public cloud due to cost concerns or developing new applications on-premises for greater control. The partner ecosystem continues to evolve, with service providers focusing on consultative engagements and technology partners like AMD, NVIDIA, Intel, and Canonical expanding integration possibilities.
Looking ahead, Broadcom is doubling down on security innovations like online threat detection while working to bring feature parity between VM and Kubernetes workloads. The vision includes deeper integration with physical networking infrastructure, creating a unified experience rather than forcing customers to choose between physical and virtual implementations. In Vijay's words, VCF now beats public cloud on "cost, security, and control" – a powerful value proposition for organizations navigating their cloud journey.
Ready to explore how VCF can transform your infrastructure strategy? Connect with us to learn how these innovations can help you build a more secure, cost-effective, and controllable cloud foundation.
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And I'm here at VMware Explorer with Vijay from Broadcom. Vijay, how are you? Very good, Evan, Thank you. Thanks for being here. What a week. I'm glad you still have your voice and I have mine so we can still talk about some of the amazing topics we're going to dive into. Before that, maybe introduce yourself, your team, your role within Broadcom these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've been here in Broadcom slash VMware for a number of years over 12 years. I currently lead product management for the core infrastructure, which is compute storage, networking, data and data protection, and I started off my career at VMware as a storage guy and now I'm expanded beyond storage.
Speaker 1:Fantastic journey, of course, vcf. Huge news here. As always at VMware Explorer, a lot of opportunity, a lot of changes, enhancements when it comes to compute storage networking. What's the biggest opportunity? Maybe change this year.
Speaker 2:So there are a couple of you know. Actually, I'll say three things right. One is on the storage side. We have made a tremendous number of enhancements, you know, back in the day I started, in the day I started working in VMware several years back and started this thing called vSAN, and now vSAN is actually an enterprise-based storage system that has gone through many years of evolution. The latest announcement that we made is global deduplication to reduce the cost of storage for customers. But also ESA in itself is a high-performance you know scale-out storage, and so one exciting thing that we're seeing is a lot of customers are really migrating from sort of hardware-based storage to software-defined storage vSAN, esa and with global deduplication and the snapshot and the replication capabilities that we have added, it's a no-brainer to switch to a software-defined mode.
Speaker 2:The other big thing that I would say is that was announced at Explore on the networking side is the construct called VPCs. This is a construct that's available in the public cloud. We're bringing this construct of VPCs, a virtual private cloud, into the VCF platform. Embedded into the VCF platform, it provides a way for customers to isolate networks and workloads. Really exciting development on the networking side and including performance improvements that we keep making every release and a number of enhancements. On the compute side, right, you know, memory tiering we announced that with VCF 9.0, you know, reduces the cost of memory, allows customers to pack more workloads and so, you know, across the board, on compute storage, networking, new innovation and all you know, geared towards making our customers' lives simpler and more cost-effective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. And private AI is the big theme this year and in the industry, you're making it easier for customers to run their AI workloads on their own infrastructure. What's been some of the feedback you've seen from partners, from customers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's still early days in terms of private AI. You know departments, but a lot of customers, especially the infrastructure, on the infrastructure side customers are starting to ask us hey, how do I? You know what do I do, how do I plan for? You know what GPUs to buy, you know how much GPU, what resource management of GPU, you know, or resource management of GPU. End of the day, ai workloads need to run on a performant, resource, efficient infrastructure, and so capabilities like live V motion with GPU, resource management of GPU, so that time slicing is done in the right way these kinds of innovation that we delivered to the market really is providing the right way. These kinds of innovation that we delivered to the market really is providing the right framework, or then the right foundation, to run, you know, your AI in a private data center.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really compelling and you've added a lot of new cyber recovery and compliance and security features into the platform. A lot of those are getting attention, particularly from your customers and really regulated industries. Yeah, yeah, that must be pretty gratifying given all the challenges out there.
Speaker 2:I'd say, if anything at all at this Xplore, that's the most exciting development. Right, we announced cyber resiliency, cyber compliance, advanced service. Really, really, it boils down to three things. One is automated recovery for customers if they're hit with a ransomware attack, and so we are bringing a cyber recovery product, which used to leverage the cloud as a destination, as a target. We're bringing it to an on-prem only department. It's very exciting. Second is that compliance is the most complicated topic for our customers, because it's no longer a point-in-time audit mechanism, it's a continuous. You know, customers are looking to stay compliant and to be able to tell themselves that they are compliant in a continuous manner, and so the advanced service that we announced has capabilities to continuously monitor their existing environment against desired state configuration and monitor config drifts and to be able to remediate that. And so those two features, along with the hardening of the platform itself, including end-to-end encryption, end-to-end confidentiality, et cetera, provides a really secure platform for our customers, and so that's a really, really exciting announcement that we made at this expo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fantastic and it's clear. Customers are really coming along the journey to VCF and I think Walmart's announcement that they were going all in on VCF for their global edge and private cloud was a big deal, not just for the marketing teams, but for other reasons. What does it tell you about VCF and the technology and its readiness and ability to scale?
Speaker 2:Customers across the board. Walmart is one example. All of us have had many meetings with more with Walmart this explore, where they're transforming it, transforming themselves into a VCF private cloud environment. But not just Walmart, but other customers across the board. They are embracing this private cloud and, you know, for the first time, a customers are telling us that hey look, we have a real alternative to public cloud, public cloud departments, and so VCF is meant to be that alternative to public cloud deployments, and so VCF is meant to be that alternative to public cloud. And the platform, along with not just the infrastructure but the services and the tooling that we provide around it, provides a great platform for anyone either bringing the workloads back because it's too expensive to host in the public cloud or developing new workloads on-prem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting as well. I just came from a partner discussion and the ecosystem is really evolving and being enhanced. Partners are going all in on VCF, not just service and support, but on consultative style, engagements and deployment and advisory work. I mean this is going to change the way you deliver.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. We rely on our partners to plan their customer's transition to a private cloud and we train our partners and the partners take the front row seat to transforming our customers' environments as well. Of course, we work with customers as well, but we train our partners to deliver that service to our customers.
Speaker 1:Let's talk a little bit about the future. Are there particular areas that are really exciting for you? As a technologist and longtime engineer, you know what are you doubling down on? Obviously, security. You've already put so much work in to VCF, but there's more work to do in the other areas. What are you excited about?
Speaker 2:I'll give you two things, Actually three areas, that really excites me as a product manager at VMware. One is definitely doubling down on security. We have just started right and there's a lot more to do here, and we're going to continue to do that.
Speaker 2:The bad guys are getting pretty good, absolutely, and we have to get smarter, and so you can imagine things like online threat detection as one example of core innovation that's going to happen in the platform. You know, the second area is really around application, the focus on application developers, right? So you know, we have a rich feature set for VMs, and over the next few years we want to bring the same feature set to a Kubernetes-based deployment on VCF, and so we sort of view Kubernetes and VMs as just two different ways of deploying applications. But the same tool set and the same kind of feature set, such as data protection, backup recovery, snapshotting, et cetera, will apply towards Kubernetes and containers as well, and so that's an exciting area and it's highly differentiated for us to deliver such a platform for our customers.
Speaker 2:That's the second one, and then the third one is on networking. And so on the networking side, previously, you know, when we were an independent, when our networking division was an independent, you know business unit we sort of went toe-to-toe with the networking vendors like Cisco, arista, juniper. With VCF as a private cloud platform, we're going to integrate further with the physical fabric and so customers don't have to choose between a physical fabric implementation versus a virtual networking implementation, it'll be one big, happy family in the future.
Speaker 1:I love that Putting customers first. They're really demanding that and you're also in the ecosystem partnering more deeper, broader with AMD, 100%, nvidia, canonical. I saw this.
Speaker 2:Our partner ecosystem is evolving. Of course, we have our traditional partners, storage partners, but then our CPU partners are evolving AI, amd is a great partner, intel is a great partner. We announced, you know, gpu enablement of AMD GPU chipset, same thing with Intel with Gaudi 3. We're going to enable that, and so that's evolving. And, of course, you know, with our Kubernetes, platform enhancement, we announced the canonical partnership, and so our partner ecosystem is evolving as well, and that's another exciting area of development for us.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. Well, it's very exciting. Hawk said this week that VCF now beats public cloud on cost security and control Very bold statement and for many customers that's proving the case. I mean, if you had to pick one of those areas, would you think one of those stands out, or you really have to balance all three of?
Speaker 2:those. I think you have to balance all three. I think cost is a definite consideration for a customer. So is security. The whole reason why a lot of customers are repatriating back to product cloud is security, and so we have to stay ahead of the curve there. And so I wouldn't pick one. I would say all three are important and in fact, if you look at a roadmap, if you were to distill it down, it's really across these three sort of areas that we are investing in cost compliance. So you're not picking your favorite child, no way, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, congratulations on that. Thank you, that's really impressive work.
Speaker 2:Thank.