VMware owner Broadcom announced the VMware Cloud Foundation platform a few weeks ago that it is AI native to the VMware Explore Conference.
Maintaining the rest of the wide and rapid adoption of the technology industry’s large language model was the company’s latest move, but since it acquired virtualization giant VMware in November 2023, the company has been battling bad news about the licensing policy changes that have plagued it.
Several lawsuits focusing on existing contracts, including termination of free tiers on the platform, reporting aggressive sales tactics to get subscribers on board, and existing perpetual licenses have led many users to rethink what is often the basis of their IT stacks. Nutanix, Suse and IBM were among the beneficiaries from those who left VMware in the stable house.
However, the nature of VMware deployments means they are often complex, and pulling workloads from a severely virtualized environment running on a platform can be accompanied by high migration costs, rather than insignificant risks for organizational QoS metrics. It’s better to stay and pay with the demon you know, rather than go out on your limbs and move to an alternative.
Similarly, engineering AI into VMware products is full of the same potential fallout as the danger. Once you reorganize your VMware platform and burn AI at the core, your end-user stud workload will pay for the price of the change. And the nature of software is that the deeper, more corrupted changes are made, the greater the potential negative impact.
The first aim of Broadcom is to make it easier for users to deploy AI models and agents within their existing environments. The VMware Private AI Services will ship with a VCF 9 subscription next year and consist of all the necessary elements to build and run AI on-premises, or at least external hyperscale facilities. It includes a model store (at least in the test phase, many organizations will be at least open source, small models, vector databases, agent AI builders, and off-the-shelf API gateways to allow optimized machine-to-machine communications between separate AI models that require working in sequence with open source, small models, vector databases, and off-the-shelf API gateways.
Meeting attendees were told that AI in the enterprise would only grow, so it only makes sense that AI should be a feature of all VMware-based infrastructure. Currently, what Broadcom offers is an AI-oriented nod, but nothing unique or new. The company has also announced a simpler release of its MCP servers, as well as improvements to the VMware Tanzu platform, including its new data lakehouse, Tanzu Data Intelligence.
For VMware’s own developer, the probably low fruit was intelligent assist for VCF, a chatbot that has access to the VMware KnowledgeBase. AI-powered ‘bots allow users to spend more time raising problems and questions and talk to people who can help.
The excitement over the widespread adoption of containers has led many to declare that the end was nearing due to “traditional” virtualization. The reality was that legacy infrastructure would force enterprise users to integrate with the platform they invested in, despite rape-like licensing fees and high costs.
VMware may be spreading a bit of AI Fairy-Dust deals between IT and its customers, but it has been found that the presence of legacy infrastructure at the core of a company will guarantee its long-term revenue.
(Image source: “Virtual Try On” by Jurvetson is licensed under 2.0 at CC.)
Want to dig deeper into the tools and frameworks that shape modern development? Check out the AI & Big Data Expo in Amsterdam, California and London. Explore cutting-edge sessions on machine learning, data pipelines, and next-generation AI applications. This event is part of TechEx and will be held in collaboration with other major technology events. Click here for more information.
Developertech News is powered by TechForge Media. Check out upcoming Enterprise Technology events and webinars here.
