VMware Explore 2024 live: All the news and updates as they happen

While you’re waiting, why not check out some of ITPro’s previous coverage of VMware.

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A lot rests on this year’s VMware Explore conference - the firm needs to muster a confident push behind its message and offerings if it wants to stifle customer unrest in the wake of the Broadcom acquisition.

Given the title, AI will no doubt also be a hot topic. Last year, VMware rolled out a set of new ‘Private AI’ offerings aimed at helping enterprises prepare VMware’s cloud infrastructure in the AI era.

The firm released expanded partnerships for its private AI services later in 2023, announcing it would be joining forces with IBM and Intel. These partnerships brought Intel hardware and software suites and IBM Watsonx into VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).

We’ve arrived at the conference center for today's event. It’s already filling up as attendees file in ahead of this morning's keynote.

The keynote stage is the usual neon, matched by two big visual displays to keep us entertained while we wait.

After a short promotional video, Broadcom CTO, EMEA Joe Baguley hits the stage. Baguley says today’s keynote is going to be customer success-focused. We’ll be hearing from customers, and about AI (you can’t have a keynote without AI these days, Baguley says).

Next up, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan. He says we’re going to see a “great change” here at VMware Explore 2024. Users are now confronting the ‘three Cs’ - cost, complexity, and compliance.

“The future of enterprise is private,” Tan says. Private cloud and private AI solutions are the focus for VMware, as Tan thinks they will be the way forward in the cloud landscape.

Tan says the firm is committed to creating a unified tech platform in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), combining all aspects of compute, storage, and networking.

VCF is also the “ultimate sovereign cloud solution” - sovereign cloud is a hot topic at the moment, with many firm’s looking to process data in-region. Tan and VMware are targeting this growing market here.

Broadcom VP of Products Paul Turner takes to the stage after Tan. He wants to talk about data siloes and the heightened cost of legacy applications. The solution to these sorts of problems can be found in VCF, it looks like.

He talks about the extent of offerings “native” to the VCF platform, as well as the choices on offer to users in terms of private cloud deployment. There are self-managed and ‘as-a-service’ deployment offerings for example. Throughout these offerings, there is both license and workload portability.

VCF 9 - unveiled at the firm’s Las Vegas conference over the summer - will now get a visual demo. Turner shows off the platform's operations, fleet management, and security features.

“How many of you struggle with certificate management?” Turner asks. Well, VMware has solved that too, with certification features.

Application teams also have access to automation tools, and other features within VCF 9 include tenant management, troubleshooting, and specific tools for working with Kubernetes. App admins get a faster, more agile experience, Turner says.

Innovations at the core of VCF include memory tiering, native VPCs, vSAN Dedup, and live patching. Turner adds that VCF 5.2 is now easily upgradable to VCF 9.

After a short customer success video featuring Ratiodata, Baguley is back on stage. He talks up the large array of advanced services available on VCF, including security, data, and orchestration features.

Baguley also heralds in the first announcement, ‘VMware Live Recovery’ for Google Cloud VMware engine. He also announces Tanzu data services with VMware Cloud Foundation.

Finally, ‘Intelligent assist for VMware vDefend.’ This is an automated remediation tool that offers steps for fixes and then performs them. Baguley is joined by two more Broadcom execs to look at how these features work.

The Tanzu services, for example, make sure that everything for an app is available within an app space. The Tanzu integration allows users to manage data and security within app development, as well as deployment within data centers.

vDefend, on the other hand, provides visibility and planning for security monitoring. along with security features from vDefend advanced threat protection (ATP).

Now for another announcement titled ‘VeloRAIN,’ a networking offering specifically targeting AI. He gives an example of a shopper using Ray Ban smart glasses to buy products and the network complexity of that smart device connecting to the smart devices around it and processing data with AI. VeloRAIN is designed to bolster AI networking.

Next up, Broadcom Global Head of AI & Advanced Services Chris Wolf, who’s going to talk about Private AI, a term that’s been thrown around a few times already at this event. It’s also a term VMware has used to describe previous products.

Wolf talks about why customers are using VMware private AI, including policy and control management advantages, resource sharing, lower cost in certain areas, and centralized operations.

He adds that performance in these virtualized environments are on the same level as bare metal systems.

So what’s new with VMware private AI? Apparently, there’s now a model store system, as well as deployment guidance tools and GPU reservation tools. There’s also ‘Ethernet for Private AI Networks.’

After a quick recap - and Wolf’s direction on where to go should attendees want to explore any of the topics more - it’s time to end the keynote. Make sure to stay up to date with more coverage as the event goes on.