Broadcom Integrates AI into VMware Cloud Foundation, Amidst Licensing Controversy and Migration Challenges
At the recent VMware Explore conference, Broadcom announced that its VMware Cloud Foundation platform now boasts AI native capabilities, marking a significant stride in keeping pace with the rapid integration of large language models across the tech industry.
However, this announcement comes amidst ongoing negative publicity surrounding changes to Broadcom’s licensing policies since the acquisition of virtualization powerhouse VMware in November 2023. The termination of the platform’s free tier, allegations of aggressive sales tactics, and several legal disputes over existing agreements have prompted many users to reconsider their reliance on VMware as a foundational element of their IT infrastructure.
Competitors such as Nutanix, SUSE, and IBM have benefited from this exodus, as businesses seek alternatives to the complexity inherent in VMware deployments. Migrating workloads out of heavily virtualized environments can result in high migration costs and potential risks to Quality of Service (QoS) metrics, making it a risky proposition for many organizations.
Broadcom’s aim with this AI integration is to simplify the deployment of AI models and agents within existing environments. VMware Private AI Services, set to ship with VCF 9 subscriptions next year, will offer all the necessary components for building and running AI on-premises or outside hyperscale facilities. This package includes a model store (anticipated to see widespread adoption of open-source, smaller models), indexing services, vector databases, an agentic AI builder, and an API gateway for optimized machine-to-machine communication between collaborative AI models.
Attendees at the conference were informed that the integration of AI in the enterprise is set to increase exponentially, making it essential for every VMware-based infrastructure to incorporate AI capabilities. Broadcom’s offerings represent a step towards this vision, although they do not introduce anything entirely new or unique. In addition to these developments, improvements to the VMware Tanzu Platform were announced, including simplified publishing of MCP servers and a new data lakehouse, Tanzu Data Intelligence.
An AI-powered chatbot named Intelligent Assist for VCF was also introduced, providing users with quicker access to VMware’s knowledgebase and reducing the time between issue reporting and human intervention.
Despite predictions of the impending demise of traditional virtualization due to the popularity of containers, legacy infrastructure continues to hold sway within enterprises, despite high licensing fees and costs. While Broadcom may be incorporating AI into its offerings, it understands that its long-term success is tied to the continued presence of legacy infrastructure at the heart of the enterprise.
