Broadcom starts beta for VMware Cloud Foundation 9, the release it reckons will douse user anger

Pricing, licensing changes won't feel so bad once you take this private cloud stack for a spin, apparently

Exclusive Broadcom has quietly started a closed beta of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) version 9, a major release that fully expresses the tech giant's vision for what a private cloud should be.

Prashanth Shenoy, Broadcom’s chief marketing officer and marketing veep for Cloud Platform, Infrastructure, and Solutions, on Monday told The Register a select group of customers this week received the beta code and suggested wider testing will follow.

Among the features in this release are the ability to create a private cloud from within VMware’s central management tool vCenter. That’s a chore that previously required a collection of tools. Single sign-on across the many component parts of a private cloud has been delivered, license management tools beefed up, and automation improved. We’re told self-service provisioning of virtual machines, Kubernetes resources, and storage, have also been enhanced.

The VCF 9 beta matters because before it took over at VMware, Broadcom said it intended to make Virtzilla’s products easier to implement and consume by fully integrating its compute, storage, and network virtualization tools.

While users waited for that promise to be realized, Broadcom stopped selling discrete VMware apps and moved to subscriptions for a handful of software bundles. While the (now-notional) prices of the components in those bundles fell, the requirement to buy multiple products that customers may not have needed or wanted, plus support, meant users saw their VMware bills increase markedly.

Many customers were angered by those rises, and even VMware partners like Rackspace sought relief by moving to rival platforms for some workloads.

Are you testing VCF 9, or know more? The Register is always happy to hear from VMware users. Contact us here in confidence.

Through 2024, Broadcom insisted that the pain was worth it because implementing VCF paid for itself by giving users a highly manageable private cloud – even as it promised to address significant shortcomings in the suite.

VMware offered some improvements to VCF with the July 2024 release of version 5.2, which made it possible to import existing discrete deployments of VMware products into VCF and added welcome updates, like live patching of the ESXi hypervisor.

Since August 2024, VMware has touted VCF 9 as the release that would deliver on its full vision and prove the value of its bundles by offering users private clouds that are easy to deploy and manage, and cheaper than public clouds.

That promise seemingly did not improve customers’ moods. In November 2024, analyst firm Gartner told us VMware customers were all miserable.

Shenoy suggested that view is a "lagging indicator" of customer sentiment, and that VMware revenue is a better way to measure intentions.

That’s an interesting statement as Broadcom’s most recent quarterly results announcement included news of accelerating sales, vastly reduced costs, and a decision to stop reporting VMware revenue and costs on a standalone basis.

Financial data describing the success of VCF 9 may therefore be hard to find.

Shenoy, as you’d expect, believes the release will do just fine.

He admitted that Broadcom’s past software acquisitions mean many VMware customers were wary after the acquisition of the virtualization software house, but said Broadcom has won them over.

“One of the things we have changed is a lot of customers are more comfortable with what we are doing,” he told The Register. “A year later we have given them confidence that we focus on R&D and innovation,” Shenoy said.

He told The Register evidence of that confidence includes users who have deployed earlier versions of VCF accelerating repatriation of public workloads to the VMware stack and increasingly deploying containerized and AI software workloads to the platform. Those shifts, he said, should accelerate once the superior VCF 9 arrives.

This has been a journey with a lot of transformation

He also told us Broadcom has sorted out its channel and services strategies, so help will be available once the update arrives.

Another thing he feels is in VMware’s favor is that VCF prices are now comparable with those offered by rivals.

“This has been a journey with a lot of transformation,” he said. “Now we get to the momentum.”

Customers may wish to dig out their Smiths records and ask “How soon is now?” as a December 2024 Broadcom regulatory filing promised major VCF releases in March and July.

Maybe this beta is the March release, and July will see VCF 9 exit beta? ®