‘VCF 9 really makes it possible for a larger group of customers to build private cloud automation through orchestration,’ says Softchoice’s SVP Chris Woodin. Here’s what partners need to know about the soon-to-be launched VMware Cloud Foundation version 9.
With Broadcom’s newest VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) version 9 private cloud offering expected to become generally available soon, channel superstar Softchoice is preparing to win over new customers with VCF 9 as more businesses are seeking a full-stack end-to-end private cloud solution.
“VCF 9 really makes it possible for a larger group of customers to build private cloud automation through orchestration. And while that was something typically done only by large, more complex customers—it’s something that we are seeing customers in nearly every segment move towards,” said Chris Woodin, senior vice president of solutions and alliances for Softchoice, a $2.5 billion Broadcom-VMware global partner
With VCF’s price point of $350 per core alongside new technical capabilities inside VFC 9—including around operations automation, cyber threat prevention, memory tiering, new integrations and SecOps—Softchoice is bullish that VCF 9 will simplify the deployment and operations of private clouds for customers across the globe.
[Related: Broadcom Exec On VMware Prices-TCO Besting Competitors And ‘Big’ VFC Partner Opportunities In 2025]
“That’s creating a new opportunity for VMware with customers who might have previously only used VMware, in a lot of cases, just as a virtualization layer,” Woodin said.
“If they’re only going to continue to use VMware as a virtualization layer, as a hypervisor, then they’re not going to get great value from licensing VMware through VCF. But if they are serious about building a private cloud, what they’re finding is that VCF is actually very, very high in value,” said Woodin (pictured above). “I definitely feel that VCF 9 is meeting the moment.”
VCF 9 is slated to become available sometime during the “first part of 2025,” Broadcom said.
VCF 9 ‘Takes The Pain Away’ From Private Cloud
In an interview with CRN, Broadcom’s vice president of VCF and chief marketing officer, Prashanth Shenoy, said VCF 9 “takes the pain away from building, deploying and operating” a private cloud.
“The promise of VCF 9 is your day-to-day job of setting up a private cloud platform, operating it, doing lifecycle management, fleet management, upgrades, patching maintenance—is now built into the product,” said Shenoy. “So you can operate your private cloud at ease and at scale.”
VCF 9 features a new self-service cloud portal for provisioning services and reduces the total number of management consoles from more than a dozen to just a single console each for operations and automation. New integrated workflows aim to simplify the transition between operations and automation tasks, and enhanced insights and analytics enables more proactive management.
“We made it so that it’s self-service, so it takes the friction out of developers. For developers, the infrastructure becomes a black box,” said Shenoy. “We have made it extremely platform, engineer, DevOps and developer friendly, so you get that public cloud experience in private cloud using VCF 9.”
VFC 9 also includes the ability to import VMware NSX, VMware vDefend, VMware Avi Load Balancer and complex storage topologies into existing VCF environments, and leverage and integrate older versions of existing infrastructure. Broadcom also unveiled a new intuitive user interface (UI) to further simplify management and deployment.
“Enabling customers to take their existing environment and easily upgrade that to VCF is a huge focus for us,” Shenoy said. “So we made it drastically simple for them to upgrade from wherever they are with [Broadcom-VMware] to a VCF way of managing. That’s a big area that our partners should be really excited about because we’ve taken all the pain away from the mundane operations and this painful thing that took them months and months to get there.”
VFC 9 also includes advanced memory tiering with NVMe aimed to enhance data-intensive applications such as AI that reduces latency and accelerates data throughput.
Customers ‘Need To Evolve Their Understanding Of What VMware Is Today’
Toronto-based Softchoice generated $629 billion in gross sales during the third quarter of 2024, representing a revenue increase of 20 percent year over year.
In 2023, Softchoice was named Broadcom’s Geo Partner of the Year for North America.
Since Broadcom merged with VMware, the combined company purged VMware’s offerings from hundreds of point products into several bundle offerings including VCF, VMware vSphere Foundation, vSphere Standard and Enterprise Plus.
Softchoice’s Woodin said all Broadcom-VMware customers need to evolve their understanding of what VMware is in 2025.
“A few years ago, VMware was a portfolio of tools across a very broad array in the environment. A lot of the changes that Broadcom has made to the VMware portfolio over the last couple of years is to really concentrate on specific tools that build the private cloud, which is really everything in VCF,” he said. “So customers shouldn’t look at VMware as a portfolio of point products that they might put together, but rather as the complete solution that’s required to build a private cloud.”
With the VCF 9 enhancements, Broadcom is making it even more effective in achieving specific outcomes that customers expect from automation.
“For example: modernizing the IT process, enabling them to securely adopt AI and some huge benefits in cyber resiliency by creating a much more lateral layer of protection for the environment,” Woodin said. “As we enter 2025, there’s a very high desire for our customers to build private cloud automation through orchestration.”
VCF 9 New Security Features And Easier Integrations
On the cybersecurity front, VCF 9 enables fleet-level operations and centralized security and compliance management to deliver uninterrupted operations and more proactive risk mitigation. This is done via new native capabilities for security operations (SecOps) inside VCF including a centralized information hub as well as configuration drift detection technology.
Additionally, VFC 9 includes native vSAN to vSAN data protection thanks to remote snapshot replication technology aimed at strengthening data resilience with immutable snapshots and reduce downtime with disaster recovery orchestration.
VFC 9 also includes advanced cyber threat prevention via new vDefend capabilities such as distributed firewall impact analysis; distributed intrusion detection and prevention enhancements to support large and multi-instance VCF environments; rapid threat assessment to help harden security posture by enabling threat profiling of VCF environments; and on-premises malware prevention for regulated organizations that require air-gapped deployment of VCF.
On the integrations front, VMware Cloud Foundation 9 includes multi-tenant capabilities previously provided separately by VMware Cloud Director into the VCF platform.
VFC 9 also provides the next evolution of virtual private clouds (VPCs) as a native networking-as-a-service experience inside VCF to increase developer productivity, reduce operational burden on IT, and enable faster provisioning of workloads and applications. Native VPC capabilities aim to simplify networking by letting users access self-service isolated connectivity without VLAN complexities and enable non-disruptive integration with existing networks.
Softchoice Bullish On VFC 9 Partner Services
One significant move Broadcom is making to help partners drive VCF 9 sales and customer opportunities is shifting professional services from Broadcom-led engagements to partner-delivered services such as consulting and implementation services.
Additionally, Broadcom recently introduced VCF Advanced Services that includes a catalog of ready-to-deploy channel partner private cloud services and solutions.
“There’s been a lot of dialogue in the market about the disruption that’s been caused in the Broadcom channel. I think that’s true, because the ideal VMware partner profile has become much more concentrated,” said Woodin.
However, these changes are benefiting partners like Softchoice.
“If you’re a partner that relies solely on resell—you’re not fitting in the ideal profile. If you’re a partner that was concentrating on tools outside of the VCF suite—that’s a hard profile fit. But if you’re a partner like Softchoice, who is entirely services-led, building private cloud solutions on VCF, and has the experience of helping customers do that in private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid infrastructure environments—you have a huge advantage with VMware going forward. Even more so than you probably did in the past,” said Woodin.
Overall, Broadcom’s upcoming launch of VFC 9 is a home run from Softchoice’s perspective.
“What we’re seeing is that as customers are consolidating onto the VCF platform for private cloud, it’s enabling them to shed cost from other third-party tools that might have been necessary in the past,” Woodin said. “Despite the disruption over the past year, we’re feeling as bullish about the value we can create for Broadcom customers as we ever have been in the past.”
