Himanshu Singh on VMware’s Advances in Kubernetes, AI, and Cloud Operations Strategy

Let introduce you to my friend Homan Singh. Homan is with Broadcom Homan. Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having Me. Enjoying enjoying CubeCon so far.

Absolutely. Very exciting day one today. Yes.

It's been a, an energy, always a lot of energy. Oh, yeah. I keep calling.

Yeah. Haman, you, before we get into, we, we've got a couple things we want to talk about. I want to spend a little time just letting our audience know a little bit about who you are and Yeah.

You know, so give them, if you don't mind, a little bit of your background. Absolutely. So, yeah, I am director of product marketing, um, at, uh, VMware by Broadcom.

Right. So my focus areas right now are around Kubernetes on VCF, which are, which is our VMware cloud Foundation offering, uh, everything, AI as well. And then also looking at our kind of cloud operations, cloud consumption, uh, capabilities used to be part of the old Aria portfolio.

Sure. Uh, essentially, right. So a few of those things kind are, you know, very related areas to each other in terms of how consumption works in a private cloud.

So happy to be, you know, working on that piece, but not VMware coming to two and a half, 13 years now. So lots of changes. But also, So you were v VMware before broadcast.

Oh, yeah. You've seen a lot of changes. I have seen a lot, and I have the scars to prove it.

Yes, I bet you do. I bet you do. You know a lot of people, or look in the software world, I think everyone knew VMware, and I think everyone knows that vm.

Not everyone, I guess, but most people know VMware is now part of Broadcom and Broadcom's a name. I, again, I think a lot of people know Broadcom by name, but they don't realize all of the things that Broadcom is part of, without asking you to be the Broadcom spokesman. But you're going to be, give us an idea of the different tentacles, if you will.

The Broadcom, Yeah. Tentacles. That's interesting.

Uh, it's, it's less, Well, an octopus is a very intelligent network, Very intelligent. Then let's just go with that, right? Yeah.

So, um, Broadcom actually right now consists of, I think, 26 different divisions. Oh, I didn't realize it was that many. They operate as almost as independent businesses.

So you have a lot of flexibility. Each kind of GM has a lot of flexibility in terms of just going to market as, as they were. So it's Broadcom's known in terms of more of a hardware company for a very long time.

Yes. Massive hardware, innovations, et cetera. I mean, you know, um, but at the same time, in past, I wanna say close to a decade, they've went into software, you know, very strongly to kind of really think in terms of, if you look at a hardware business, which is very kind of seasonal, uh, you know, there's this like press and troughs versus software.

It brings kind of more stability. And I think that's what HK Tan was thinking about in terms of, you know, growing Broadcom beyond the hardware pieces. So you got, you know, a few different pieces.

The, the Broadcom software group now has, and then of course, VMware by Broadcom probably the biggest acquisition in the industry when it happened in 2023 timeframe, 65, I would say Broadcom, VMware, or ca was a big buy too. Yeah, CA Was big as well. C was like 16 Something, but it was older.

So you got go by, you know, if you put inflation on those nuts. Oh, that's true. Yeah.

It probably is closed. Yeah. Ca was a long time ago.

And then of course, I think that was the first big software. Yes, absolutely. And so they started with that, and then they kind of got the flavor of it, and so then they went Symantec, they went VMware, uh, et cetera.

And VMware is a whole kind of different story, right, because Oh, yeah. 'cause I think, you know, the, the kind of ecosystem VMware brought with it for Broadcom, uh, there was a huge amount of, I think learning in terms of the Broadcom culture as well. And we are very fortunate to get like the support that Hog Tan has provided to VMware.

Um, there's been a lot of focus for sure. Yeah. Um, VMware behaved very differently before, um, kind of an amalgamation of a bunch of different groups versus now it's extremely focused.

We've got one of one, one key offering, which is VMware Cloud Foundation. Um, and then really making sure that we are going after the private cloud, the value we're delivering and building capabilities around it into VCF. Um, and that's been doing like very well for, for VMware overall in terms of, you know, how, you know, Look, you've been in VMware, what'd you say?

13 years? Most of 13 years now. Yeah.

I've been following VMware longer than that even. Right. And if you look at the history of VMware, very interesting.

Right. For those of you out there, I'll give you a little history as I know it. Right, of course.

It was kind of, it was kind of spun out of, actually it was started and then brought into EMC, wasn't it? Yes. Right.

The original founding team, kind of, there were a lot of hypervisors vying for the market space back then that Time. Yes. Um, the Red Hat one, there was some open source swans, but VMware, it was very, at the time, everyone thought it was very lucky to get hitched into the EMC uh, orbit.

Yeah. You know, and similar to Broadcom, it was basically kind of a hardware company. EMC was a hardware storage company.

Storage. Yeah. And now all of a sudden they've got this hypervisor company, and I think it was a bit of a redheaded stepchild, if you will, because it wasn't core to what EMC did.

Then you saying then now EMC goes and gets acquired by Dell, another hardware company. That's Right. Although Dell would argue, like by the time they came to Right.

That Software, Well, much like Broadcom, they were transitioning software Yes. To even out the cyclical, the cyclical hardware cycles. Yeah.

Then Dell goes private. Yeah. Spins out.

I think they spun VMware out and was the first time that VMware was truly, truly independent. That is true. Since it was first.

That's true. Yeah. Formed.

That's probably around when you joined, Or it's, no, so I joined back in, uh, 2013. Uh, so That was still Dell or EMC? Yeah, That was EMC.

Okay. So it was EMC, then Dell came in 2016, i, I believe. Right.

Um, and, you know, a whole bunch of things through that. And then of course we Mware became a spun out independent company. Uh, I think we might have been technically independent for like six months.

Right. And then Broadcom kind of made the announcement of the acquisition. It's an amazing thing.

Yes. No one's ever let VMware just be VMware. It Is extremely valuable in terms of that VMware has and the, well, It's also the market share, right?

Oh, yeah. VMware though, as we said, there are a lot of open source hypervisors and public cloud hypervisors and so forth. VMware is the hypervisor.

Right. Has been Absolutely. Continues to be.

Now Broadcom board it, and you know, there was, there was all kinds of rumors and feelings about what that meant for VMware, but as you said, I think htan surprised a lot of people in that he didn't treat it like ca Yes. He didn't treat it like some of the other software acquisitions, I think, because for the same reason Dell and EMC, they recognize that you got a diamond here. Right.

You, you can't, you gotta shine it up. You can't try to break, you don't wanna, you're not a diamond cutter. Absolutely.

And, um, and so it's, it's had, its a reflowing, if you will Yeah. With Yeah. That's word.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

And that is, look, we all talk about license changes and all of these things, but when you look at people who are either staying on VMware or leaving VMware, they don't cite cost as the issue. The issue is freedom. Do I wanna have a multi-cloud a a, uh, hybrid cloud?

Do I wanna just stay in my private data center? Do I wanna be locked into anyone's walled garden? And these are the things people care about.

Yeah. Yeah. But, And, and I think, um, this is the thing with, again, any kind of like platforms that we have, you know, no matter which vendor you're talking about, uh, you know, at the end of the day, it becomes a platform play.

You know, where do you wanna standardize on? Um, there's always gonna be, you know, some silos that you might have. Hey, companies acquired this and that, uh, and or they grow with certain things organically.

But by and large, you know, when you look at large enterprises, they want to look at overall cost, overall sanitization, um, that helps with cost, but also from an over, you know, just ongoing operations perspective, skillset perspective. How do you make sure that what you have can be leveraged and, and then basically expanded more and more. And this is the kind of story that works for, I mean, it doesn't matter if it's, you know, Broadcom or VMware or some of the other vendors.

You know, you wanna make sure that you are able to provide the benefits of standardization. While, uh, and I was just having this conversation with, with a colleague earlier, while giving the folks who are doing the innovation, the flexibility of being able to do that without feeling locked in. Right.

And that's exactly what we're striving to do when it comes to kind of VCF. And, uh, yes. This, we went through a whole bunch of changes, uh, in terms of bringing things together, uh, which also for the first time, Big, big, big focus, I mean, VMware fantastic culture, but the thing that we lacked before was the focus on making sure it all works well Together.

Discipline, right? Yeah. There was a little a DD, if you will, entrepreneurial a DD.

Yes. Um, and, you know, and that's not a bad thing, but focuses a good thing. Now we're here at Cube Con, though, and people say, okay, hypervisor cool, Kubernetes, how's the, what's the connection?

And if you're asking that, then you really don't understand. Right. Uh, containers, orchestration of containers has run on, have predominantly run on hypervisors.

That's right. From day one. That's Right.

Um, VMware pre Broadcom was a huge supporter Yes. Of coup. Absolutely.

Of, of CNCF. They continue to be under Broadcom as well. Yes.

Uh, talk to us a little about that. Yeah. So VMware has been involved with CNCF for the longest time, and, you know, basically Right, right.

From since inception, pretty much Yep. Got involved with Kubernetes right up front. Uh, and, uh, we've been, this is something that folks are actually surprised to hear that we've been, if you look at long-term Kubernetes projects, uh, you know, contributions by companies, we are the number three.

People are very surprised to think, oh, we, you guys have been that active. Yes, yes. Absolutely.

And it is just that we never kind of talked about it. No. Right.

But then people, right there, people put Together since The, since the beginning, you know, if you, this is again, coding c nnc, f sta statistics, um, it's been a top, top, uh, contributor. We've got a lot of people who are maintaining a lots of kind of, uh, c nnc, F projects, Kubernetes. So the idea has been that we've not been like just the users of Kubernetes and incorporating it and making sure it works on a platform.

We've been right there with the community building it help, helping to build it all this while. And, uh, and we wanna continue to do that in an even stronger way as we go forward, because, um, as you think about core infrastructure, it doesn't matter. You wanna run applications on virtual machines or on containers, which predominantly, as we said, pretty much, uh, you know, uh, everyone, including all the hypervisors, run the containers on Kubernetes on a virtualized environment where everybody has their own kind of flavor.

And because it brings a certain amount of, you know, benefits to be able to do that, all the isolation, benefits, security, and all that kind of good stuff as well. Um, and making sure that we provide this experience of running containers and Kubernetes as good as folks have enjoyed running virtual machines on a VMware environment. Right.

We have been always known for, for VMs, of course, you know, we we're the market leader, uh, no matter what metric you choose, but, and we are doing the same when it comes to containers and Kubernetes, um, to make, to provide that experience. And this is exactly where, as part of this VCF platform I was talking about, the vSphere Kubernetes service, or VKS kind of comes in. We used to talk about this as, uh, a tan, zu, uh, service Yes.

Back in the day. And, uh, as we came into Broadcom, we moved all the Kubernetes and infrastructure pieces as part of VCF. Again, to that point of focusing, focus, simplifying, providing a better experience to customers.

At the end of the day, that's what it's all about. And so our TANSU team is focusing very much on a pass environment, uh, uh, going directly to developers while the VCF piece is working with platform engineers predominantly, and of course, our core kind of audience, the IT admins, the IT team that have been running infrastructure. So that's kind of how the overall evolution has been.

And there's just, there's so much more that we are now looking forward to do, because when you focus, you can do so many more things better versus just doing a whole bunch of things in average way. So we're very excited about that. I, I, I, I don't, I could see why.

Right. I, I could see that happening. So here's one thing we haven't mentioned, though.

That's been a big thing, and that's ai. Yes. How is AI changing, influencing, showing itself in this, in this ongoing evolution?

So we, um, been in involved when it comes to the AI space and providing the infrastructure for AI workloads for quite a long time. And we've been working with NVIDIA for more than a decade at this point in time, to make sure that all the innovations from nvidia, therefore the gpu, vgpu, et cetera, are available as part of the, as part of vSphere before. And then now VCF, of course, the other thing is, um, I forget when it was, but I think might have been 2023.

We kind of put our foot down and, and talked about private AI as a key piece. We basically said, Hey, uh, private AI is, again, not about like the location, but the concept of privacy of your data. AI in itself is all about massive, massive amounts of data Yes.

And where it resides. So we wanna make sure that customers are able to get the insights from all that data without having to move the data around, keeping it within their boundaries, keeping it safe and secure. And again, if you folks have used vSphere or VCF, they understand the level of, you know, enterprise grade security that comes with the platform.

And so we are bringing the exact same thing to all AI workloads. And the, of course, when it comes to ai, you're deploying it using Kubernetes, you're deploying it on containerized, the applications are typically containerized. And so making sure that the experience we get for all our private AI services and capabilities that are all included in VCF with V Kubernetes service as well.

In fact, um, today at the CubeCon, they talked since CF announced the new, uh, Kubernetes AI conformance program. And we are one of the first, one of the few really, uh, starting kind of conformant and certified platforms, um, you know, VK Ss as part of that. So it kind of underlines the importance of AI in general and how we see at the end of the day, it's just another workload.

And we wanna make sure customers have all the tools available on the VCF platform to be able to use VKS, use our private AI services to build those, uh, those, uh, you know, applications that they do. I, I, I think, I'm not sure we're running low on time, but one of the things I wanna close with, and, you know, I'm directing it right to our audience, and you look in that one when you respond, which is, look, VMware's always been a supporter of the Cloud Native Computing foundation of Kubernetes, of containerized, of cloud native computing in general under Broadcom. That commitment is of anything stronger than ever and remains so today and tomorrow.

And, uh, you know, anyone who says different is, doesn't know the truth. Yeah. Just need to get educated.

That's all. Just need to like an education, learn more, figure, figure it out, and, and they'll see the value. Yeah, Absolutely.

Hey, thank you for all you do. Thank you. It's a pleasure as always having you on.

Um, I hope we won't wait till the next cube con. I would love to, you know, get in touch earlier and Shed these conversation. We shoot these every day outta the studio.

All you gotta do is write me. Absolutely. So it's on you.

Absolutely. It's on me. All right.

Haman, you sing, sing, uh, Broadcom, VMware, Broadcom, VMware, Broadcom the right term here on Techstrong. We're gonna be back in just a minute.