VCF: The key to cloud success now and in the future

While the public cloud has dominated the enterprise space for more than a decade, the private cloud is making a resounding comeback, with the market recording a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.35% between 2020 and 2023, according to analysis by Research and Markets, 

This growth rate is expected to continue in the coming years, with the private cloud market predicted to reach 191.66 billion in value by 2030. 

Other industry research shows enterprises are now flocking to private cloud in large numbers. Indeed, IDC found that more than 80% of companies are preparing to repatriate resources to private cloud environments. 

Similarly, Barclay’s 2024 CIO Survey highlighted a similar enthusiasm, with 83% of enterprises planning on making the shift away from a public cloud to a private setup.

This resurgence is being fuelled by a combination of factors, such as growing data security and compliance requirements, as well as the advent of generative AI - which in itself has given rise to a variety of new infrastructure and security-related considerations. 

Likewise, public cloud costs - which have increased significantly over the last five years -  have also become a major pain point for organizations. 

In IDC’s FutureScape – The Infrastructure and Cloud Impact: 2024 Predictions survey, 40% of respondents identified public cloud costs as a leading issue for their enterprise, which is further fueling interest in private cloud. 

Notably, the flexibility and scalability now afforded by private cloud is a leading appeal for IT decision-makers, enabling businesses to customize environments based on their unique individual needs, avoid costly vendor lock-in, and improve security by reducing attack surfaces.

The latter of these elements is of particular appeal to enterprises given strict regulatory requirements and the fact that 80% of data breaches in 2023 involved data stored in the cloud, per research from IBM.

With this in mind, organizations considering the shift to a private cloud setup must choose the right provider and understand what they’re getting into – as well as what truly constitutes ‘private’ in 2025. 

A ‘true’ private cloud

The meaning of ‘private cloud’ has changed drastically in recent years. While typically associated with cumbersome in-house IT infrastructure, modern options are a far cry from previous setups.

Modern private cloud combines the strengths of a traditional operating model akin to that seen in the public cloud domain but with the notable aforementioned benefits. 

Crucially, private cloud today doesn’t necessarily have to be on-prem or even managed by the enterprise itself. Modern options can be hosted at an enterprise’s own data center, but similarly, they can be hosted in a third-party colocation facility or by a provider that specializes in private cloud services. 

This is where VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) offers a key differentiator for organizations making the shift back to the private cloud. 

VCF is the industry’s first full-stack private cloud platform which offers the scalability of the public cloud, combined with the security, resilience, and customization capabilities of the private cloud. 

First launched in 2016, VCF provides a comprehensive infrastructure platform to streamline compute, networking, storage, containers, and management capabilities. 

The most recent iteration, VCF 9, was announced at VMware Explore in August 2024. It will be available this year and aims to simplify private cloud deployment, consumption, and management by allowing organizations to manage infrastructure as a unified system. 

This will include the launch of a singular platform for operations and automation, as well as platform-wide integration of key product ranges such as vSphere, vSAN, and NSX. 

Delivering value with VCF

Organizations spanning a range of industries are leveraging VCF at present, and case studies show they are unlocking significant value from the unified platform. 

Analysis from IDC, for example, found that organizations adopting VCF will “realize benefits worth an annual average of $111,100 per 100 VMs ($16.8 million per organization)”. 

IDC found these savings were delivered in several ways, including by enabling enterprises to optimize IT infrastructure and reduce hardware overheads by establishing hybrid and multi-cloud environments. 

The platform has also helped reduce the scale of infrastructure and create a more streamlined environment for development teams, which has improved agility. 

Enterprises using VCF experienced 34% lower infrastructure costs, for example, and improved infrastructure team efficiency by 53%. All told this has resulted in a 42% lower cost-of-operations, highlighting the significant financial benefits of the platform. 

Faster deployment of IT resources was also a key advantage highlighted by IDC’s research, which in turn has boosted application performance and availability. Users recorded 61% faster deployment of new virtual machines (VMs), as well as 50% improvements to network capacity and 32% boosts in storage deployments. 

This, IDC found, has been particularly transformative for users and resulted in a 564% three-year return on investment (ROI). 

Leaning on partners to drive value

Notably, VMware by Broadcom draws upon a vast array of partners to support VCF deployments and assist customers in their private cloud journeys. A key component of this approach lies in the Broadcom Advantage Partner Program for VMware Cloud Service Providers (VCSP), unveiled in 2024. 

Boasting hundreds of partners, this program is mutually beneficial both to Broadcom and the partner organizations themselves by fostering close collaborative ties that ultimately deliver downstream value. 

This service allows partners to integrate VCF and alternative solutions within their cloud and managed service offerings, thereby growing potential revenue opportunities, according to Broadcom. 

These VCSP partners play a critical role in facilitating cloud transitions for customers, and the program will help accelerate these efforts and enable users to maximize value from their strategies faster.

With a confluence of factors now driving private cloud adoption, making the shift with a trusted, industry-leading provider has never been easier or more important.