VMware Cloud Foundation 9 will enable infrastructure teams to deploy private cloud environments more efficiently through a unified platform
At VMware Explore 2024 in Las Vegas, Broadcom — which acquired VMware in November 2023 — announced VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9), a platform it said will help organizations transition from siloed IT environments to a unified, integrated private cloud platform, while simplifying infrastructure deployment and operations.
In general, it’s incredibly challenging for enterprises to manage the deployment, operation and consumption of a secure and cost-effective private cloud. But speaking to press, Paul Turner, the vice president of products in VMware’s cloud foundation division, expressed that the key to simplifying this management is going beyond the virtualization of a single IT layer. “We can do more than that,” he said. “We can virtualization the entire data center, the storage, the compute.”
He continued: “Our traditional legacy architecture is really not working in terms of bringing governance, control and agility to a cloud because you’ve got different teams managing different environments. It’s not very efficient. So VMware Cloud Foundation is the private cloud platform. It gives you the entire virtualization of the data center so that [you’ve] got the modern infrastructure that [you] need.” Specifically, VCF 9 introduces more centralized cybersecurity controls and enables native multi-tenancy for customers, allowing different teams to share infrastructure while remaining in control of their own privacy controls.
The technology allows infrastructure teams to deploy private cloud environments more efficiently through a unified platform that automates and simplifies operations, and also delivers an easy-to-consume platform for infrastructure consumers, like platform engineers and data scientists, who leverage these environments to run applications.
Turner highlighted the ability of the public cloud to scale and remain agile — thanks to its software-defined nature — implying that VMware is taking this concept but then pairing it with the higher levels of security and resilience of the private cloud. This, he said, will allow enterprises to “implement the policies and rules of [their] business in a dynamic way.” In fact, Broadcom at the same time introduced VMware Cloud Foundation Advanced Services, a catalog of solutions designed for private cloud environments that are “similar to what enterprises have come to expect in the public cloud.”
In a press statement, Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager, VCF Division at Broadcom commented: “To break the infrastructure silos, reclaim control of public cloud sprawl, and capture the opportunity for AI in the enterprise, our customers are shifting from best-of-breed siloed architectures to a modern private cloud platform. VMware Cloud Foundation 9 will redefine the landscape for private cloud by delivering a modern, integrated platform that will unify operations and automation to deliver a cloud experience that enables businesses to be more innovative, efficient, resilient and secure.”
