Wait is over for Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation 9
The first major revision of the VMware platform under Broadcom's ownership is now available to all VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation subscribers.
The VMware Cloud Foundation 9 platform is now generally available after a year of hype and promises from Broadcom.
VCF 9 is available to VMware subscribers at the VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation tiers today at no additional cost, according to the vendor. There is no deadline to complete the upgrade from the prior VCF version, Broadcom spokespeople said.
First teased by Broadcom CEO Hock Tan last August at the VMware Explore 2024 conference, VCF 9 wraps the numerous capabilities from VMware's back catalog of virtualization and cloud services into a unified private cloud platform. Highlights of VCF 9 include a new, unified management console for all the platform's capabilities to replicate a cloud experience, faster deployment compared with prior releases and a variety of capability updates, according to Broadcom.
Data center and cloud analysts said VCF 9 brings useful capabilities to the VMware platform, but changes surrounding Broadcom's pricing of the platform in recent years have created a different view of the virtualization market titan.
VMware is now akin to mainframe technology, as a very powerful IT platform, but one that's limited only to the customers with the cash to spend and specific enterprise needs, said Jerome Wendt, CEO and principal analyst at Data Center Intelligence Group.
Customers that need the massive, powerful capabilities of the VMware platform are likely already bought in, and gaining more capabilities through a bundled subscription can't hurt, he said. But mainframes have become a niche market as IT diversifies, and a similar fate could await the VMware platform as Broadcom focuses on only the largest enterprise customers.
"They're giving you the entire stack, which enterprises may not have had access to," Wendt said. "I still think there's value there if large enterprises are willing to make that investment, but it's like a mainframe [purchasing] decision."
A brief outline and history of the VMware company.
Cloud nine
VCF 9 features a new architecture that prioritizes private cloud services across a customer's data centers and partner public clouds, Broadcom spokespeople said during a media briefing ahead of the launch. The unified interface provides role-based access control management, governance policies with preconfigured blueprints and automated infrastructure allocation for developers.
Broadcom's push for unification also extends to virtual machines and Kubernetes containers, as the vSphere Kubernetes Service manages both services through the same interface and operational model.
FinOps services include a holistic total-cost-of-ownership overview that incorporates software licensing, operations and data center costs alongside infrastructure demands. Automated resource optimization and comprehensive showback and chargeback data make sure that customers can maximize their spend, according to Broadcom.
The vendor said the new SecOps dashboard will enable security teams to view and adjust the platform's security and data controls to their needs and take advantage of confidential computing capabilities from AMD and Intel chips.
Storage capabilities highlighted by Broadcom in the new release include global dedupe for vSAN storage, a vSAN-to-vSAN data protection and recovery service, and tiering for NVMe drives.
Broadcom will also sell additional "advanced services" on top of the customer's VMware subscription for more specific needs. Early services available around launch will include VMware vDefend for security, VMware Live Recovery for disaster recovery and Avi Load Balancer for plug-and-play load balancing capabilities.
VMware's bundling offers useful capabilities, but also puts it in direct competition with many existing software tools and services that a customer might already have for FinOps, logging and other needs, said Scott Sinclair, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, now part of Omdia.
"There's a tipping point with unifying an experience where you start hitting tradeoffs over using bespoke tools," Sinclair said.
Most of the services offered by VMware in VCF 9 have existed in the public cloud previously, but Tan had a point in mentioning at the keynote speech last year that cloud customers were suffering from "PTSD," Wendt said.
Cloud costs can spiral out of control due to human error, so bringing operations back in-house with burst usages to the hyperscalers as necessary could help keep costs more predictable and under control, he noted.
"Most organizations' IT is not that well managed," Wendt said. "When you go into a public cloud, you have to account for [all that] and you're going to get billed if you don't manage that. With a private cloud, you at least know what your costs are going to be on an annual basis."
One size doesn't fit all
VMware's pricing and purchasing changes, which shifted from customers purchasing software and services a la carte to a few subscription packages, brought grousing and uncertainty among VMware customers, according to analysts.
Although other virtualization and platform vendors like Nutanix or the open source Proxmox have been attempting to capitalize on this unrest, VMware's feature set remains above competitors with capabilities such as Fibre Channel support for storage or its software-defined networking, Wendt said.
If you're switching to Proxmox [from VMware], you had no reason to be on VMware to begin with.
Jerome WendtCEO and principal analyst, Data Center Intelligence Group
"There's a pretty sizable gap between them and their nearest competitors," he said. "If you're switching to Proxmox [from VMware], you had no reason to be on VMware to begin with."
Customers might also be satisfied with the existing software or services that their VMware subscription entitles them to, making the new additions moot, said Naveen Chhabra, an analyst at Forrester Research.
"If you use the VMware stack all the way through, you'd have to throw out competitor products or reduce their scope," Chhabra said. "VMware as a virtualization stack is omnipresent [in the data center], but are these products best in class, or do I have to use them all from an economic standpoint? Does [VCF] tick all the boxes in terms of requirements?"
The additional services for VCF sold by Broadcom could be another point of contention among VMware customers, Wendt said. Despite Broadcom's claims that these services add more capabilities to the platform, users shouldn't feel that they're missing out on capabilities if they're already paying for the highest tier of service.
As Broadcom will likely not budge on prices, these advanced services could be negotiated into a customer's contract when a contract renewal approaches, he said.
"I think it becomes a negotiating point for the enterprises," Wendt said. "Give me the private cloud, but don't nickel-and-dime me."
Sinclair noted that most of VMware's customers have likely decided to stick with the platform or depart for core business functions following Broadcom's purchase in 2023 regardless of how Broadcom expands VCF's capabilities in the future.
Despite Tan's promise of more flexibility and lower cost compared with the public cloud, VMware customers are facing a new kind of lock-in, Sinclair said.
"Organizations have investigated alternatives and now understand how truly dependent they are on [the VMware] platform," he said. "For better or worse, it will make it more difficult for organizations to move away in the future."
Tim McCarthy is a news writer for Informa TechTarget covering cloud and data storage.
