The rise of platform engineering, AI workloads, and cloud-native apps is reshaping how enterprises think about infrastructure. It's not just a VM vs. container debate anymore-organizations need to support both, at scale, with a consistent operating model across on prem, edge, and cloud.

That's where VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) comes in. Built to unify virtualized and containerized workloads on one integrated platform, VCF offers automation, governance, and lifecycle management out of the box-while delivering up to 52% lower total cost of ownership compared to bare metal centric approaches.

To break it all down, VMblog sat down with Mark Chuang, Head of Product Marketing for VMware Cloud Foundation at Broadcom, to discuss how VCF is helping enterprises simplify complexity, accelerate delivery, and modernize on their own terms.

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VMblog:  Many organizations are finding that they need to support both VMs and containers. What makes VCF the right platform for running and managing both?

Mark Chuang:  You're right that enterprises aren't choosing between VMs and containers. They're running both. VCF brings them together on one platform to do exactly that. Everyone knows VMware provides the gold standard when it comes to virtualization. What some don't know is that we built in a CNCF-compliant K8s runtime into VCF, so they have it all in one solution - no need to piecemeal something together at a higher cost - and with a consistent operating model that simplifies operations, reduces tool sprawl, and shortens the time for platform teams to deliver traditional and modern workloads alike.

VMblog:  How does VCF support the diverse needs of stakeholders like CIOs, IT admins, and platform engineers when it comes to infrastructure for applications?

Chuang:  Each persona has different priorities-but VCF checks all the boxes. CIOs care about agility, security, and cost efficiency for delivering the apps that run the business. VCF delivers all three. IT admins want to eliminate silos, enforce SLAs, and manage through policy-not tickets. VCF enables that with our integrated platform approach, which includes policy management and governance. Platform teams want to offer developers a public cloud-like experience with private cloud control. VCF includes self-service capabilities with governance across VMs and K8s clusters using the same APIs and tools that they are already familiar with.

VMblog:  What differentiates VCF from other private cloud platforms?

Chuang:  VCF is a fully integrated stack-compute, storage, networking, security, and Kubernetes-with unified operations and automation. Competing platforms often require stitching together separate tools and lifecycle processes. That creates silos and operational drag. With VCF, updates, patching, observability, and security are unified. You get true Day 0 to Day 2 lifecycle automation. It's a purpose-built private cloud platform for running all apps with far less operational complexity.

VMblog:  How are customers using VCF to improve the way they operate?

Chuang:  They're seeing measurable gains in speed, efficiency, and cost savings. Customers using VCF report up to 50% faster IT delivery and massive reductions in manual provisioning efforts. Teams can spin up infrastructure in hours instead of weeks, and centralized observability helps right-size environments, reclaim underutilized resources, and avoid unnecessary spending. One customer cut provisioning time from 20+ days to just one hour with self-service automation.

VMblog:  Kubernetes is known for its complexity. How does VCF help simplify management?

Chuang:   With VCF, Kubernetes is not a separate offering-it's built in. We integrate a CNCF-conformant Kubernetes distribution directly into the stack with vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS). That means a single API to provision and manage both VMs and containers, lifecycle automation for clusters, and native support for multi-version Kubernetes. We also include a set of out-of-box cloud services that are ready to use, such as service mesh, image registry, and backup. All this dramatically reduces the complexity. The last thing you want is for your highly paid developers to spend a bunch of time managing all of this on their own.

VMblog:  What's the case for VCF over bare metal when it comes to VMs and containers?

Chuang:  Bare metal might look appealing on the surface, but it's operationally expensive and results in much lower utilization of underlying resources. There's a reason why all major cloud providers run their containers services on a virtualization layer. With bare metal, you miss out on frictionless operations that enable higher utilization of resources, higher uptime during maintenance, the flexibility to run multiple Kubernetes versions on the same physical cluster, and greater levels of security isolation to name a few. -all things that are critical when operating at scale. And when you need more cluster capacity, a new K8s cluster based on VMs can be spun up in 2-3 minutes compared to 20-30 minutes to boot up servers.  Customers have eliminated weeks of work time and tens of thousands in overspending simply by moving off manual, bare-metal setups to VCF. And there's no retraining, no new tools to validate, no new processes to define and learn. Teams use the same tools and skillsets for both workload types.

VMblog:  How does VCF help with cost optimization, especially in today's environment?

Chuang:  Visibility and policy-based automation are key. VCF gives you the ability to continuously monitor usage, right size resources, decommission idle VMs, and enforce policies that prevent waste. For example, financial services firms using VCF saved millions by eliminating zombie VMs and improving capacity planning. Industrial customers have done the same by enforcing lease policies and reallocating underutilized resources.

VMblog:  Where does VCF fit into organizations' AI infrastructure strategies?

Chuang:  As enterprises look to run AI workloads on-prem for privacy, performance, or cost reasons, they need infrastructure that can support both modern GPU-driven workloads and traditional enterprise apps. VCF provides a consistent, secure environment for hosting AI/ML models alongside the data they depend on-whether that's in a VM or a Kubernetes cluster. We're already seeing customers utilize to enable private AI deployments.

VMblog:  What advice would you give to organizations looking to modernize their infrastructure?

Chuang:  Most organizations I talk to have a common set of business outcomes they are looking to achieve in their cloud efforts. But each one is at a different place today - a different starting point. And it's not just about the technology - any successful plan must comprehend the people and process aspects. Broadcom has worked with thousands of customers on this journey and we have tools and resources to help organizations start where they are today, define where they want to get to, and map out a customized plan for how to get there. Our goal is to help organizations move faster and smarter without adding new complexities.

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