Day two in Frankfurt was a different kind of day. Fewer big announcements, more deep dives. And honestly, I like that. Day one tells you where Broadcom is going. Day two tells you how to actually get there.
Getting ready for VCF 9.1
The first session of the day was a very practical one, all about the road to VCF 9.1. Broadcom showed two tools. The VCF Readiness Assessment connects directly to the management interface of your servers, like iDRAC, iLO, CIMC or IPMI. It builds an inventory of all your hosts and their health, and gives you a report on VCF 9.1 compatibility. It’s still in beta.
Next to it there’s VCF Inspector, which is free to download. It checks if your current environment is ready for the 9.1 upgrade, follows the upgrade while it runs, and keeps an eye on the health of the VCF management services.
For me as pre-sales, this is the kind of thing that saves real time. The first question in almost every VCF conversation is “can we use what we have?” At ITQ we already built our own readiness assessment and health check tooling for exactly that reason. So it’s good to see Broadcom closing the gaps. More tools means fewer surprises halfway through an upgrade, and nobody likes those.
The same session also had good news for VxRail customers. Since VCF 9.0, a greenfield VxRail is treated just like a vSAN ReadyNode, with VCF handling the lifecycle of the full stack. VCF 9.1 adds the upgrade path for existing VCF on VxRail 5.2.2 and later, and importing VxRail clusters that don’t run VCF yet is planned for 9.1.x. For many customers with VxRail in the datacenter, that’s one worry less.
AI comes to the network
Another session looked at AI for virtual networking. Three things stood out: high-performance virtual switching for low-latency AI applications, easy and secure networking for AI workloads, and an AI interface for network operations that helps with troubleshooting, triage and planning. That last one made me smile. Anyone who has ever chased a network issue at two in the morning knows that a little help with triage is very welcome.
Our own moment on stage
But for me, the highlight of the day was the presentation of the ITQ Cloud Platform. And I’m not only saying that because I work at ITQ. The room was pretty filled, and the audience was interested.
That says something about the market. Yesterday I wrote about the tension I hear from customers: new licensing, higher renewals, and the question if they are still on the right platform. Today I heard a second question next to it: “Who is in control of our platform and our data?” Sovereignty is no longer a nice word on a slide. It’s on the agenda of boards, CISOs and CFOs.
The ITQ Cloud Platform is our answer to both questions. It’s a fully managed private cloud on VMware Cloud Foundation, on dedicated bare metal in the Netherlands, with Worldstream providing the physical layer and ITQ running the platform. Customers keep their applications, their data and their control, and they choose how to pay: monthly as OPEX, or up front as CAPEX. And we are honest about it too. It’s built for organizations that run VMware at scale, not for someone with ten VMs.
What I liked most was that the conversations after the session were not about features. They were about grip. Where does my data live, who runs it, and how dependent am I? Those are good questions, and it was great to see so many people asking them.
Wrapping up
Two days of Explore on Tour, a full notebook, too much coffee and a lot of good conversations. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi.
Curious how much grip you really have on your own platform? Take the Cloud Control check, it takes about a minute. Or send me a message, I’m always happy to think along.
But the quest is not over yet. Tomorrow at 7:30 sharp, the Knights gather. Armor polished, swords sharpened, and coffee strong enough to slay a dragon. The realm of VCF still has secrets to reveal, and we ride at dawn. 🛡️⚔️
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