Broadcom CEO doubles down on private cloud at VMware Explore
Hock Tan talked only for several minutes during the keynote at VMware Explore 2025, but in that time, he laid the groundwork for a host of VMware updates.
LAS VEGAS -- Hock Tan didn't mince words when he took the VMware Explore 2025 stage Tuesday. The Broadcom CEO's message was clear: VMware's future is tied to increasing private cloud demand.
That message kicked off a slew of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) launches and upgrades, including an expanded partnership with software firm Canonical, virtualization for the latest AMD GPUs, bundled VMware Private AI Services into VCF 9.0 and a host of Tanzu additions.
"Last year when I was here, we talked about private cloud being the future of the enterprise. Twelve months later, the future is here," Tan said. "You want to invest in private cloud. But here's the challenge: VMware innovated for years, but they never truly integrated the building blocks of a cloud."
For Torsten Volk, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, now part of Omdia, Tan was laying out a clear strategy. Cloud repatriation, moving workloads from public cloud to hybrid or private cloud, is gaining momentum as companies look to control costs and add security.
"The main pitch was very blatantly that, 'We are better than public cloud. We can do everything public cloud can, and we do it more securely, we do it with more control, and we do it more effectively," Volk said. "He was basically saying that VMware is better in everything than public cloud, which is very interesting … because everybody else is talking about hybrid cloud."
Bolstering VCF with AI, security, partnership
At the event, Broadcom unveiled the inclusion of VMware Private AI Services as a standard component of VCF 9.0, making it an AI native platform. That gives VCF customers access to AI tools such as its support assistant Intelligent Assist for VCF, Model Context Protocol support to connect with external AI tools and services, and the ability to run AI models on a range of hardware and GPUs from Nvidia and AMD, the company said.
"They clearly had to do that," Volk said. "Because agentic AI is the No. 1 topic for everybody."
Chris Wolf, Broadcom's global head of AI and advanced services for VCF, told attendees that Private AI Services has evolved since the company first launched it three years ago.
"The world has caught on to the notion that you can bring your models to wherever the data resides, and you can run those models at a lower cost without having to sacrifice privacy or control of your data," he said.
On the security side, the company touted its VCF Advanced Cyber Compliance with updates in VMware vDefend and VMware Avi Load Balancer for bolstered private cloud compliance and security in regulated industries.
Broadcom also announced an expanded partnership with Canonical that will give customers access to the Ubuntu Pro, the leading operating system for Kubernetes. Volk said that will put VCF in striking distance of competitors like Red Hat for Kubernetes workloads.
"I think that partnership could be a big deal because the key thing is to get people to believe that they can get from legacy to cloud native easily," Volk said.
A VCF pitch to SMBs
After Broadcom's $69 billion VMware purchase in 2023, SMBs and organizations faced sticker shock when services were bundled and exclusively made available through subscriptions. Customers suddenly faced with 8 times to 15 times price increases for renewals, according to multiple reports.
During Explore 2025, VMware tried to show that even smaller companies could benefit from a broader portfolio of virtualization services. The company included Jeremy Wright, director of IT infrastructure at Iowa insurance company Grinnell Mutual, in its on-stage lineup, who talked about how his company came to take advantage of VMware's offerings.
"I had heard what people were saying about pricing, so I came [to last year's VMware Explore event] looking for answers," Wright said. "I really started to think, 'This looks like it's a good fit for really big companies, but is it powerful enough and a fit for a team like mine?' And that doubt lingered."
Wright said that he found that switching from discreet storage clusters to VMware's vSAN software-defined storage offering would save his company $1 million.
"VCF started to feel like it's not going to be so big for us and that it's just going to perfectly scale to my small team," he said.
Wright said he started looking to add VMware by optimizing other software renewals and cutting spending elsewhere. He presented his plan to his company's C-suite, and it approved his plan.
"VCF is transforming our infrastructure from the ground up … it's a unifier for us," he said. "Stop thinking about it as servers and infrastructure and start thinking and talking about it as a private cloud experience."
Shane Snider, a veteran journalist with more than 20 years of experience, covers IT infrastructure at Informa TechTarget.
