VMware Cloud Foundation Delivers a Private Cloud Platform to Accelerate Customers’ AI, Sovereignty .

• 06 Nov 2024
• TM Team
• 0 Comments

Adoption of artificial intelligence, national digital sovereignty, and maintaining cyber resilience in times of uncertainty are paramount to today’s digital-first organization. Broadcom Inc. is helping customers address these critical business outcomes through a private cloud platform, VMware Cloud Foundation, that is simple to deploy, easy to consume, and lowers cost and risk. At VMware Explore 2024 Barcelona this week, the company is furthering this mission by announcing an expanded set of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Advanced Services innovations, ecosystem partnerships, and modernization programs that can accelerate generative AI application development, cybersecurity initiatives, and sovereign cloud adoption.

“Broadcom is enabling the private cloud everywhere with VMware Cloud Foundation,” said Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager, VCF Division at Broadcom. “Through a private cloud platform and portfolio of Advanced Services that are ubiquitous, flexible and secure, we are unlocking the promise of AI in the enterprise, delivering new levels of organizational resilience, and supporting the privacy and digital sovereignty demands of customers around the world.”

VMware Cloud Foundation is the industry’s first private cloud platform to deliver public cloud scale and agility with private cloud security, resilience and performance, and low overall total cost of ownership. VCF supports customers’ digital innovation with faster infrastructure modernization, a unified cloud experience, and better cyber resiliency and platform security. The VCF private cloud platform can be deployed consistently in on-premises data centers, in hyperscale and partner clouds, and at the edge, and customers benefit from license portability which enables them to purchase subscriptions of the new VCF software and have complete mobility across environments. VMware Cloud Foundation Advanced Services is a robust catalog of ready-to-deploy solutions that enables customers to accelerate innovation in their private cloud environments. VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 and 5.2.1 have been released this year, and Broadcom has announced intent to deliver VMware Cloud Foundation 9.

“IPZS, the Italian Mint and Printing Institute, has been entrusted with the responsibility of deploying the Italian version of the European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet initiative, making Italy the first country to successfully implement this project,” said Paolo Bazzica, CIO of IPZS – Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato Italiano. “As part of a transformational program to modernize its infrastructure, IPZS created a new modern Digital Application Platform (DAP) using VMware Cloud Foundation. This has enabled faster and more secure software development, deployment, and maintenance, ensuring the reliability and scalability of Italy’s EUDI Wallet.”

“For running enterprise-grade applications across both virtual machines and containerized solutions, VCF stands as the industry's most advanced and comprehensive private cloud platform,” said Onno van den Berg, Mission Critical Engineer at Schuberg Philis. “VCF offers an efficient, out-of-the-box experience, providing a flexible, scalable, and resilient solution. With many of our customers already utilizing VMware based platforms for their workloads, migrations are streamlined and straightforward.”

Expanded Data Services Capabilities for VMware Cloud Foundation

Broadcom is announcing a new Advanced Service - VMware Tanzu Data Services for VMware Cloud Foundation - to streamline deployment, management and consumption of critical data services and enable faster application delivery, better data security and governance, and operational efficiency. Robust data services (databases, messaging, caching) are foundational for the success of AI applications, enabling them to function accurately and efficiently in dynamic environments. Data services offer a modern way to store, manage, and process data, addressing the challenges developers, infrastructure teams, and operators face in deploying microservices, serverless, and other modern application architectures at scale. IT organizations have struggled to operationalize the growing number of data services and deliver them effectively with SLAs. VMware Tanzu Data Services will natively integrate with VCF to deliver fleet-level automated lifecycle management including deployment, backups, clustering, security patching and updates of leading open source data services, starting with PostgreSQL, MySQL, RabbitMQ and Valkey. Enterprise support for these open source solutions will be included. Read this blog to learn more.

End-to-end Cyber Resilience, Security and Recovery with VMware Cloud Foundation

Broadcom is announcing VMware Live Recovery will support Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) as a target Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE) for VCF workloads for both cyber and disaster recovery. This builds on VMware Live Recovery’s existing protection of GCVE sites as a source, and enables a consistent, secure and simplified experience for those looking to protect VMware workloads running on-premises or in the cloud to GCVE.

“Building on Google Cloud’s support for VMware Cloud Foundation license portability, our expanded services now offer yet another important choice for customers to address their modern cyber- and disaster-recovery needs,” said Mark Lohmeyer, VP & GM of Compute and AI Infrastructure, Google Cloud. “Together, Broadcom and Google Cloud will continue to design, develop, and deliver cutting-edge services that enable enterprises to run VMware workloads securely and cost-effectively on Google Cloud.”

Broadcom also announces that the VMware vDefend Advanced Service for VCF now offers GenAI-based intelligent assistance to help IT security teams proactively triage sophisticated threat campaigns and recommend remediation options. The enhanced threat defense solution with Intelligent Assist co-pilot can help significantly lower false positives and the number of alerts, provide security teams greater situational awareness across their environment, and speed up remediation. Read more in this blog here.

Expanding an Ecosystem of Generative AI Services with VMware Private AI

Broadcom’s Private AI strategy is centered around privacy, control, simplicity, automation, resiliency, and choice of AI hardware, models, software and services. That allows organizations to invest in a secure AI platform that can quickly onboard new services as business or industry needs change. Today, Broadcom is announcing support for Microsoft’s Azure AI Video Indexer, on VMware Private AI running on VMware Cloud Foundation and Azure VMware Solution. Azure AI Video Indexer is an Azure Arc extension enabled service that runs video and audio analysis, and generative AI on data center or edge devices. This announcement marks another step by Broadcom to accelerate customers’ rapid innovation and time-to-value for AI projects on the VCF private cloud platform, and enables the Azure AI Video Indexer to run anywhere they do business. 

Free VCF Licenses through VMUG Advantage for VCF Certified Professionals

VMUG is an independent, global, customer-led organization, created to maximize members’ use of VMware and partner solutions through knowledge sharing, training, collaboration, and events. In a new exclusive benefit to VMware User Group (VMUG) members, Broadcom will provide VMUG Advantage subscribers a 50% discount on VMware Certified Professional (VCP) and VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP) certification exams. Upon successful completion of a VMware Cloud Foundation certification exam (VCP or VCAP), VMUG Advantage members will have access to a free personal use VMware Cloud Foundation license for up to three years.

Continued Expansion of Private Cloud Modernization Program

By providing expert guidance, tailored training, and innovative resources, Broadcom ensures that businesses can confidently transition to a private cloud, regardless of where they are in their private cloud journey. Today, Broadcom is announcing continued investments in the Private Cloud Modernization Program, designed to help customers navigate their private cloud transformation journey with VMware Cloud Foundation.

New VMware Cloud Foundation Architect certification: Broadcom is announcing the new VMware Certified Professional - VCF Architect certification. The VMware Cloud Foundation Architect certification is specifically designed for individuals who can conceptualize and design VCF solutions that fulfill both business and technical requirements. This certification not only validates an architect's skills in designing systems with essential characteristics such as availability, manageability, performance, recoverability, and security (AMPRS), but it also emphasizes the importance of capacity planning, disaster recovery, and scalability.

Private Cloud Maturity and Optimization Tool for Partners: Broadcom is making the Private Cloud Maturity and Optimization tool available to partners. This tool empowers partners to help customers realize the technical and financial value of the private cloud, and chart a path forward to achieving their key goals and objectives. Partners get access to the Private Cloud Framework, an assessment resulting in a Private Cloud Maturity Index Score for their customers and prescriptive guidance from Broadcom. By leveraging the model, partners can accelerate customers outcomes, deliver strategic account plans faster, and develop and deliver new services.

VCSP Partners Support National Digital Sovereignty

Broadcom is announcing that 50 VMware Cloud Service Providers (VCSPs) offer sovereign cloud services based on VCF, including 30 across EMEA. Sovereign VCSP partners meet the requirements for local operations by a legal entity that owns, operates and manages the sovereign cloud offering with complete jurisdictional control, local data residency, and portability without lock-in (full reversibility).

VMware Cloud Foundation includes specific capabilities that uniquely address sovereign cloud requirements, including privacy-enhancing computation support with Intel and AMD chipsets (Confidential Computing); integrated data-at-rest protection with vSAN Encryption; Secure Boot for ESXi Hosts and vSphere virtual machine encryption; comprehensive data services; and compliance monitoring, alerting and reporting with VCF Operations. VCSP sovereign clouds also support Bring Your Own Keys (BYOK), providing customers with even more confidence that no one else, not even the CSP, can view or access their information without permission.

“The data revolution is rapidly changing the way we work and live, placing the need for digital sovereignty at the forefront of our customers’ business strategies. This includes data, operational and technical sovereignty,” said Eric Chambriard, vice president of strategic alliances and sales at OVHcloud. “With VMware Cloud Foundation, we are able to leverage a complete cloud infrastructure and management platform so that we can offer a dedicated sovereign cloud service. This enables our customers to benefit from different certifications on a per country/sector basis, to keep control of their data and maintain continuity of operations.”