VMware A ‘Key Engine’ Driving Public Cloud Repatriation: Here’s Why

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and VMware partner Pellera Technologies explain why VMware Cloud Foundation 9 is helping drive customers to take their workloads off public cloud and into VCF private cloud.

Broadcom is betting heavily on VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 being the end-to-end private cloud solution that will make customers across the globe shift workloads and market share back on-premises.

“With VCF 9.0, private cloud now outperforms public cloud,” said Broadcom CEO Hock Tan during his keynote at VMware Explore 2025 on Tuesday. “It has better security, better cost management, and of course, greater control.”

“How do you let go of your IT past so you can build for the future? Well, I can tell you for sure, the answer is not to run straight to public cloud as you did five or 10 years ago,” said Tan in front of thousands of VMware Explore attendees. “If you’re going to do cloud, do it right. Embrace VCF 9 and stay on-premise.”

Perry Carfagna, executive vice president of enterprise systems and security at Pellera Technologies, said VCF 9 is opening new customer opportunities as businesses eye private cloud for various workload efficiencies and costs.

“We already have clients that are moving down the foundation path with VCF 9,” said Carfagna.

“We’re seeing this with every client who was early adopters in the cloud space: they’re starting to see those cloud expenses continue to escalate,” Carfagna said. “And they are looking at repatriating a lot of workloads that are better suited for internal, for the data center, and develop that private cloud.”

This opportunity is leading the top-notch IT services and consulting firm have “fit for purpose” conversations with customers.

“We’re having very consultative discussions with our clients of: what application resides where and why, and what are the business outcomes that they’re trying to achieve?” he said. “This is to help decide on—from an economics perspective, from a security perspective, from a performance perspective—where those applications should be. And I think VCF 9 is really the key engine that allows us to do that and have those conversations.”

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 Revamped

At VMware Explore 2025 in Las Vegas this week, VMware added new innovations and products to VCF.

One of the most important announcements was a new VMware Private AI Services becoming a standard component of VCF 9.0, making VCF a more AI-native platform.

These native AI services, such as GPU Monitoring, Model Store, Model Runtime, Agent Builder, Vector Database, and Data Indexing/Retrieval, enhance privacy and security, simplify infrastructure, and streamline model deployment. VFC customers will be entitled to VMware Private AI Services as part of their VCF 9.0 subscription, beginning in Broadcom’s first quarter fiscal year 2026.

Additionally, VMware unveiled its new Cyber Compliance Advanced Service for VCF that integrates technologies spanning policy management, infrastructure security and cyber resilience.

The new service offers integrated compliance operations with VCF SaltStack capabilities, accessible directly from the VCF Operations console. The new offering provides real-time application and full-stack infrastructure monitoring and auto-remediation.

VCF New AI Models And AI Assistant

VMware is doubling down on the AI assistant market by launching its new VMware Cloud Foundation Intelligent Assist.

The VCF Intelligent Assist is an AI-driven support assistant that will help diagnose and resolve issues faster by quickly accessing Broadcom’s knowledge base for solutions, significantly reducing downtime.

Additionally, VFC customers will also get access to new AI model innovations. This includes a new multi-accelerator Model Runtime capability that lets customers flexibly deploy AI models across a range of hardware—including AMD and Nvidia GPUs—without the need to refactor AI applications, optimizing infrastructure utilization.

Lastly, new Model Context Protocol (MCP) Support for VCF will provide governance and security for MCP, integrating AI services with diverse tools.

AI Innovation Will Help ‘Customers Adopt VFC Quicker’

Tallahassee, Fla.-based Pellera Technologies sees the new artificial intelligence innovation as a driving force behind customers decision to adopt VCF for private cloud.

“Private cloud AI is really huge for us. It’s going to give clients the ability to maybe start AI in the public cloud, but then when it’s time to do the enhancements and ensure that their data is protected, they can then bring that in [on-prem],” said Carfagna.

“The flexibility that VCF 9 gives in the AI space is going to really help customers adopt VCF quicker, understand where the best value for a specific business use case is, and then where to deploy going forward wherever the right environment is: if it’s in Azure, if it’s in AWS, or if it’s on prem,” he said.

Hock Tan: Most Businesses ‘Plan To Come Back On-Premise’

As of August, nine of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies have adopted VCF, with customers worldwide having licensed more than 100 million cores of VCF.

During Broadcom’s CEO keynote, Tan said in a 2025 global survey conducted by his company, that seven out of 10 IT professionals surveyed planned to move workloads back on-premise.

“You want to invest in private cloud, but here’s the challenge, VMware innovated for years, but he never truly integrated the building blocks of a cloud,” Tan said.

“But now, here’s the good news. Since the acquisition two years ago, we roll up our sleeves, did the tough engineering work, and the result today is VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0—a real software-defined platform to run all your application workloads with complete compute, networking and storage, tightly integrated,” he said. “This is what you asked for: we deliver VCF as a single SKU.”