VMware Explore coverage: private cloud modernization becomes foundation for production AI

theCUBE Research's Christophe Bertrand predicted in an opening analysis that the event would connect individual announcements and discussions to a broader enterprise transition. "We're going to see that VMware technology is front and center when it comes to AI transformation," Bertrand said. "And we're going to see that the topics around agentic AI, around economics, around how to really evolve into this new world, both for partners supporting customers and end users, is going to become a lot clearer." He spoke with co-host Alison Kosik during theCUBE's coverage. They also talked with industry experts about private cloud modernization through production-ready infrastructure, operational security and partner-led deployment choices, according to SiliconANGLE.

Broadcom has positioned VMware Cloud Foundation as a common foundation for that transition, bringing cloud-like development and deployment capabilities together with private infrastructure. Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager of the VMware Cloud Foundation Division at Broadcom, told theCUBE that VCF combines the public cloud's developer experience and agility with the security, cost controls and resiliency that enterprises value in private infrastructure. "The combination is what VCF is all about, and that's why customers are very interested in deploying it," Prasad said.

A common platform must also preserve flexibility as model requirements, accelerators and deployment choices change. Chris Wolf, global head of AI and advanced services in Broadcom's VMware Cloud Foundation Division, said enterprises need to make software architecture central to their planning so they can use local or cloud models and avoid tying future options to premature infrastructure purchases. He called the idea of buying hardware first and figuring out software later "a horrible idea," because software choices must be compatible with the hardware already bought. Software, he said, provides autonomy over accelerators and the flexibility to use cloud models or local models when needed.

Production workloads are also driving demand for tighter controls and placement flexibility. Purnima Padmanabhan, general manager of Broadcom's Tanzu Division, said agentic applications can write code, process claims and execute business workflows, making platform-level governance essential. Her work on Tanzu Platform Agent Foundations focuses on giving agents carefully bounded access to enterprise resources. "The right way to secure an agent is to put it in a black box and give it nothing, but then you won't get any intelligence," she told theCUBE. "I want to give it on my terms in a curated way with identity, with [role-based access control], with credential management. Being able to connect it to curated data sets all on a single platform means I can move faster."

Those controls must extend beyond the runtime as autonomous actors make rapid calls across enterprise systems. According to Umesh Mahajan, vice president and general manager of Broadcom's Application Networking and Security Division, and Clayton Donley, vice president and general manager of Broadcom's Identity Management Security Division, Broadcom's infrastructure security approach combines network visibility with signed machine identities, policy enforcement and inspection of application programming interface traffic. It also identifies agentic AI components, including models and Model Context Protocol servers, and flags unauthorized activity. "We've had 50 years of figuring out how to manage your employees or customers or other people accessing your computer systems," Donley said.