Broadcom CEO's On-Prem Push Challenged by Public Clouds

Broadcom CEO's New Private Cloud Agenda

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan recently stirred controversy when he said that public clouds are not entirely happy with his drive towards private cloud solutions. At a recent VMware Explore conference, Tan stated that VMware's new mission is to reclaim workloads from public clouds. This statement has, understandably, caused some tension with hyperscalers.

VMware's Strategy and Its Consequences

The strategy for VMware under Broadcom involves establishing partnerships with hyperscalers, enabling license portability on various platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, and IBM Cloud. Despite this, VMware still aims to redirect hyperscalers' customers towards private clouds, arguing that native IaaS environments can be more expensive and should only be used for bursty workloads. This approach has caused some unfavorable feedback from several hyperscalers.

Increasing Adoption of the Cloud Foundation Suite

Tan also disclosed that 85% of VMware sales are now for the Cloud Foundation suite, Broadcom's primary product offering for VMware. However, previous claims of seamless hybrid clouds spanning compute, storage, and networking have not completely materialized with the current version of VCF. The chipset giant promised the audience at VMware Explore improvements in future releases to address these shortcomings.

The Importance of VCF Implementations

Tan urged VMware User Group attendees to ensure the Cloud Foundation suite is fully operationalized, suggesting that IT professionals who drive VCF implementations could see their relevance and importance promoted within their organizations.