As enterprise rebalance workload placements and reinvest in private cloud infrastructure, Broadcom is positioning its VMware Cloud Foundation as the new standard for hybrid operations
A rebalancing of workloads is underway in enterprise IT, with Asia-Pacific companies increasingly reinvesting in private cloud infrastructure after a years-long surge to the public cloud.
Speaking to Computer Weekly on the sidelines of VMware Explore 2025, Broadcom executives outlined a strategy centred on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) to capitalise on this trend. VCF provides a full, software-defined private cloud stack that VMware aims to standardise across enterprises and its service provider partners.
“Clients are now more willing to reinvest in their own datacentres, with private cloud as the way forward for running their enterprises,” said Sylvain Cazard, president for Asia-Pacific and Japan at Broadcom. He added that this is not necessarily a rejection of public cloud, but a rethinking and rebalancing of workload placements as organisations mature in their cloud adoption journey.
The adoption of private cloud is visible across Asia-Pacific. Cazard highlighted Japan, where enterprises are modernising legacy mainframe systems and opting for private cloud, and India, where banks and local governments are building out new platforms on VCF. Key customer examples in the region include State Bank of India, NTT Docomo in Japan, Metrobank in the Philippines, and various government and industrial clients in Korea and Australia.
Recognising that customers are at various stages of cloud maturity and to ease the transition to private cloud, VMware offers a flexible adoption path with VCF, according to Sachin Shridhar, head of cloud transformation office in Asia-Pacific and Japan at Broadcom.
“Because we are packing more things into VCF, your choices of what journey you take are much more open,” Shridhar said. “If you cannot change your storage today, maybe you can change your container runtime. If you cannot leverage the new private AI features, maybe you can take advantage of the new firewall and load balancing features.”
To ease the transition, Broadcom also offers assessment tools, professional services, service credits and extensive partner training to help organisations migrate to VCF at their own pace.
Redefining private cloud
The executives also sought to clarify VMware’s definition of private cloud, moving away from the idea of disparate on-premise and public cloud operating models associated with hybrid cloud. “Our vision is you have one operating model, which is VCF,” Cazard said.
Shridhar expanded on this, defining VMware’s private cloud as an enterprise’s corporate policies, compliance and operating procedures implemented on a consistent VCF stack regardless of where the underlying hardware is located. This helps to reduce the complexity and risk of error that comes from managing disparate environments.
Private cloud is not necessarily saying you cannot use AWS as the underlying infrastructure. You can and you should, where it makes sense
Sachin Shridhar, Broadcom
“Private cloud is not necessarily saying you cannot use AWS as the underlying infrastructure. You can and you should, where it makes sense,” Shridhar said. The recent announcement of S3 object storage support for VCF is an example of Broadcom’s efforts to create a consistent operational experience everywhere.
Addressing the move to a subscription-only licensing model, the executives were firm.“We truly believe that for customers to get what we promised with VCF, subscription is a core component,” Shridhar said. “You will not be able to derive that level of value without having a subscription-pegged support model.”
Cazard described the move as an alignment with standard industry practices and a necessary step for VMware’s private cloud model. “We were the last ones to provide a perpetual licence,” he said, adding that it’s a “significant missed opportunity” for those that hang on to perpetual licences for systems that are “not responsive and cost a lot”.
As part of its go-to-market strategy for VCF, Broadcom has also reshaped VMware’s partner programme, discontinuing the broader VMware Cloud Service Provider programme and shifting to an invitation-only model effective later this year.
Cazard said this will reduce the number of service providers to a critical mass of partners that are invested in VCF, so that customers running VCF in their own datacentres can easily extend their workloads into a sovereign cloud operated by a certified partner, thanks to full compatibility in both technology and licensing.
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