VMware reveals how it will deliver Broadcom's unified hybrid cloud … sometime soon

Claims just two management consoles will emerge

VMware Explore VMware by Broadcom has opened its annual user conference by teasing version nine of its flagship Cloud Foundation (VCF) suite – a major upgrade touted as delivering on past promises of an easy-to-consume hybrid cloud suite – but hasn't said when it will arrive.

Before it was acquired, VMware spent years claiming that VCF – which bundles compute storage and network virtualization with management and automation tools – could be assembled into a consistent hybrid cloud environment that ran across on-prem and public cloud environments.

The claim was correct, but glossed over the fact that each of the components in VCF was built by a different team working to its own goals. Users therefore had to cope with oddities like inconsistent APIs and SDKs. The dream of a single logical hybrid cloud in reality needed multiple management tools and consoles.

Broadcom's strategy for VMware has been to improve VCF so its value is more apparent. The firm has already taken modest steps towards that goal.

At the VMware Explore conference today, VMware by Broadcom will reveal VCF 9 – touted as the kind of hybrid cloud that more fully expresses its strategy.

The biggest change is described as "a self-service cloud portal for provisioning services" which replaces more than a dozen management interfaces with two consoles: one for operations and another for automation. We're told workflow tools will make it easy to move between the two.

Better importing tools are intended to make it simpler to move current VMware implementations into VCF.

Examples of integration in VCF 9 will include multitenancy tools derived from those previously offered in VMware Cloud Director. We're told VMware users – and cloud operators that build on VMware – will find it easier than ever to create virtual private clouds, either to isolate workloads or partition infrastructure between tenants.

The suite will include some new capabilities too, such as replicating snapshots of a VSAN implementation to another VSAN to protect data and provide a ransomware recovery tool. VSAN dedupe has also been enhanced – purportedly cutting the cost of ownership by a third.

Additionally, central management and deployment of security policies across an org's IT estate is also promised.

An initiative called "Project Cypress" will use generative AI "to help IT security teams proactively triage sophisticated threat campaigns and recommend remediation options."

Advanced memory tiering with NVMe is another addition and will allow admins to tune systems for the needs of data-intensive applications – such as AI, databases and real-time analytics. The tool is said to increase memory efficiency – which would be a handy outcome given the cost of RAM can account for more than half the price of a server.

VMware hasn't confirmed when VCF 9 will debut, and when we asked it said the available info represents a communication of a vision. The content catalog for VMware Explore mentions a beta of the NVMe memory tiering, progress on other new bits is less obvious.

A very large VMware customer – who spoke to The Register on condition of anonymity – told us that in discussions with senior execs at the virtualization vendor he was informed the suite will arrive in mid-2025.

That's a long time to wait for more value from a product whose price has just risen markedly.

AI helps Intel find a friend

VMware has announced a new cut of the Tanzu application development platform that has its roots in the Cloud Foundry PaaS platform.

Tanzu 10 offers a single development platform that can run on VCF, or across Kubernetes or VM runtimes on any public cloud.

It's 2024 so Tanzu has gained an AI development framework to ease development of such apps. Tanzu components like Spring will help to bring the Python code used for many AI apps into the more enterprise-grade Java environment to ease deployment.

Also on the AI front, VMware will support Intel's Gaudi 2 accelerators – an endorsement that will doubtless be appreciated given Chipzilla trails Nvidia and AMD in the acceleration field.

VMware's edge stack has been tweaked so it can run AI workloads. A new Edge Cloud Orchestrator aims to make management of myriad boxes and applications in edge locations easier by automating updates and new deployments.

Fresh versions of VMware's VeloCloud software-defined WAN products now support broadband, Fixed Wireless Access, and satellite connections – to give users more carriage choices and greater resilience.

VeloCloud's network has been integrated with the points of presence run by Symantec – also a Broadcom-owned entity – to combine SD-WAN and the Secure Access Service Edge.

VMware will offer further detail on its plans today. The Register is at VMware Explore and will bring you that news as it breaks. ®