VMware Explore 2025 | Dilpreet Bindra, Broadcom & Mark Lewis, Canonical

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More from VMware Explore 2025

Dilpreet Bindra

Sr. Director, Engineering at VMware

Broadcom

Mark Lewis

Technology Executive, Company Advisor, Venture Investor, Board Member

Formation Data

VMware and Canonical bridge the gap between developers and enterprise IT

Enterprise IT is facing a critical moment as the long-standing friction between developers and operations teams collides with the need for faster, more resilient applications.From tangled infrastructure and heavy approval chains to the demand for agile, secure delivery, the divide has slowed innovation and complicated modernization. A new generation of platforms is reshaping this dynamic by giving enterprise IT the governance it requires while enabling developers with the freedom to build and deploy at speed, according to Dilpreet Bindra (pictured, left), senior director of engineering at VMware by Broadcom

play_circle_outline Bridging the Gap: Enhancing Developer Speed and IT Governance Through VCF 9 for Secure Collaboration

play_circle_outline Automation tools and code assistance transforming developer experiences and workflows in enterprises.

play_circle_outline Containers seen as key to VCF's success and crucial for modern software architectures.

play_circle_outline Empowering Innovation: The Role of Open Source Development in Advancing the VCF Ecosystem and Community-Driven Contributions

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Dilpreet Bindra, Broadcom & Mark Lewis, Canonical

Dilpreet Bindra

Sr. Director, Engineering at VMware Broadcom

Mark Lewis

Technology Executive, Company Advisor, Venture Investor, Board Member Formation Data

In this VMware Explore 2025 interview, theCUBE hosts John Furrier and Rebecca Knight sit down with Dilpreet Bindra, Senior Director of Engineering at VMware & Broadcom, and Mark Lewis, VP Global ISP Partnerships at Canonical, to unpack how developers and enterprise IT can finally move beyond friction to speed innovation.

Bindra outlines how VMware Cloud Foundation 9 is striking a new balance between IT governance and developer freedom - giving admins the security and control they need while empowering developers with flexible access to modern tools. ... Read more

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What are the roles and responsibilities of IT administrators and developers, and how can their functions be effectively separated to address the challenges they face? add

What has been the impact of automation tools and AI on your work, and what successes have you experienced in this area? add

What is the significance of containerization and Kubernetes in the context of product development and VCF success? add

What is the significance of open source contributions and identity in the context of technology and innovation? add

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Dilpreet Bindra, Broadcom & Mark Lewis, Canonical

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good morning and welcome back to theCUBE's Live coverage of VMware Explore. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside my co-host and analyst, John Furrier. We've got a great conversation about developers and enterprise IT and making those two work better together.

>> Yeah, cloud native has been happening with KubeCon and CNCF. All cloud developers have been enjoying a great ride, and it's only going to get better with AI. So the technology enabling that's key. This should be a great chat.

Rebecca Knight

>> Exactly. So let's welcome our next guest to the show. We have Dilpreet Bindra, Senior Director Engineering at VMware and Broadcom. Welcome, Dilpreet.

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Thank you for having me.

Rebecca Knight

>> And Mark Lewis, VP Global ISP Partnerships at Canonical. Thank you both so much for coming on the show.

Mark Lewis

>> Good to be here. Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> So as we said, we're going to talk about helping developers and enterprise IT play nicely together. Because, Dilpreet, I'm going to start with you, there's long been this tension, this push-pull between developers who want speed and freedom and enterprise IT who want governance and stability. Set the table for us. Why does that exist and what's needed to close that gap?

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Well, it's inherited in their roles. Right? The IT administrator needs to make sure that they have a secure, reliable, and a scalable infrastructure that they can make sure that their developers have access to, but they want control. And developers want to be able to drive their applications as quickly as possible, and they don't really care about security sometimes. They don't care about compliance, they don't care about certain aspects that the IT admin really, really cares about. And the key thing is to be able to separate their functions in a reasonable way so you can give the IT administrator the controls they require within their platform, but also be able to then give the keys over to the developer so the developer has all of the access to the various tools they need to be able to drive. So really with VCF 9, we've been able to do that where you could actually give the IT level controls that they need and the developers the entire freedom that they require to be able to go and drive their applications. And that's the beauty of it is the friction also came from not having the right set of tools.

>> Yeah. I mean, Mark, we were talking before we came on camera about infrastructure should be boring and that means it's working. Cloud native, I mentioned a little comment on the open, it's been a great ride with the cloud, cloud native. I mean if you look at DevOps, DevSecOps now, a lot's gone on. It's been great for developers, shift-left security's in there, all that good stuff. Now with Kubernetes kind like that orchestration de facto, I think it's still standard, some say de facto standard, that's opened up the infrastructure game now to be next level. What's your view on this? Because the modern apps are going to build on the success of the Kubernetes and ecosystem. Because you've got the DevOps, DevSecOps. Now you got to get AIOps or whatever you want to call the new thing. It's not really AIOps. But it's going to look a lot different. It's a lot more scale, a lot more agents, a lot more the same kinds of things that happen. What's your view?

Mark Lewis

>> It's absolutely what we've seen in some of our biggest software partners. It's like the folks running software at scale have made that shift. They've moved to Kubernetes and they've seen the benefits. To your point, it's about finding that balance that Dilpreet said. It's like you've got to enable innovation at the speed of cloud native, but in a way that is able to be administered, to be orchestrated, and actually delivered in a maintainable methodology that delivers the security that everyone now has to actually assure to their communities, to their users, to their audiences.

>> And a lot of people are asking us and talking to us about the developer on-prem. So cloud, cloud native is great, but now with VCF 9, which is essentially an enterprise cloud, they call it private cloud, just call it enterprise cloud because it's all connected to other environments. But it's where the crown jewels are, the data, the servers are there. So a lot more actions happening on-prem, repatriating from the cloud, developing on-prem where the data is and the servers are, and then maybe going back to the cloud. So a lot of action moving around with developers. Why is the developer equation or is the developer equation confusing on the enterprise? Is it clear? What are some of the things in the enterprise?

Mark Lewis

>> I'm going to be a little bit juxtaposed with my friend here as an ex-developer and say I was a lazy developer.

>> The best usually are.

Mark Lewis

>> If you could make the path to good behavior, the easiest path, then in actual fact everyone wins. And I think that's the key thing that is coming through with the partnership we've put together is developers are exactly to your point, it's a very diverse ecosystem and everything is everywhere. Does a lazy person really want that? No. I'm having to deal with that complexity because it does make my life more complex simply because that was the best path. If I could make the best path simpler, then in fact I will easily adopt. And I think that's the key difference that is going to actually enable this to be successful.

>> What's your vision on the best path that's simpler? What does that look like? Can you share your vision on that?

Mark Lewis

>> It's the difference between having to discover something myself, find it, and then find a methodology of consumption to having it provided for me. And I think that that's exactly what Dilpreet's been working on, is saying, look, if the folks who own the enterprise where the data is stored can in actual fact provide me with what I need, why would I not use it? Because I'm already going to get the check mark from all of the people in the hierarchy above me that this is the right path. It now still needs to offer me everything I need. And that's of course been the most difficult thing is A, building it in as a capability, but B, making sure that it is moving at the speed of cloud native and at the same time secure, maintained, and operable.

>> Dilpreet, weigh in on this. You should agree. It's a compliment of you. But this is a new... Because you have automation tools helping, code assistance happening obviously. What has that done for you and what are you working on? Can you share some of the successes and your thinking in this area?

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Yeah. So if you look at the set of things that we've done with VKS and being able to deliver Kubernetes capability for application developers, now with the Canonical partnership being able to deliver a out of the box chiseled containers, it allows the security by default that Mark was just talking about. And so that really, really helps us deliver what is necessary. Of course with AI and the advent of AI, all of those tools then augment that really well. Right?

>> Yeah. Awesome.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Mark, if you're explaining it to a customer as a former lazy developer, how do you describe why it's now such a powerful combination, Canonical plus VCF?

Mark Lewis

>> We're bringing together... So Canonical's always been the developer's choice. And so what we're doing is putting this together with the IT heritage and quality that people anticipate from VMware and saying, look, to Dilpreet's point, the chiseled containers are designed for production, they're secure by design. That makes me, the lazy developer, it takes a whole lot of steps out. I want to be writing code. I don't really want to be wrestling with containers to make them secure to then pass some audit, et cetera. If there's a repository or a registry where I can go and get what I need and I know that it's going to save me time and I know that it's up-to-date, it's maintained, it's secured, it's everything I need, I will default to that because it's also going to take care of a lot of the administration. The DevSecOps that you mentioned is taken care of out of the box. Do I as a developer want to be doing that? No. So I've taken away the business of having to go and discover the tools which are diverse and everywhere. I've also reduced that problem of like, oh, there's something I rely on which might not be being maintained at all, but I do rely on it. That's now safe. Finally, it's built into my actual path to production. How am I going to get this thing to production? There's a building my product which has been made easier. I also know that when it's ready to ship, whatever it is for whatever purpose, it is an actual fact now going to be a case of simply publishing it, making it available, launching it to my users. That's just so much administrative work that has been taken out of my life.

Rebecca Knight

>> That is in fact tedious and boring and not fun for the developer too. I was talking to an MIT professor.

Mark Lewis

>> There's no value add.

Rebecca Knight

>> Exactly. Who was saying that those tedious tasks are the repetitive stress of the modern age because they are boring and they're what is going to hurt your brain after a while if you're doing enough of them.

Mark Lewis

>> Exactly. When I'm planning my project, I don't really think what's the overhead I'm going to have to put in to get this thing ready for production?

>> We had a developer say that same use case, laid it out, "My life got so much simpler. I reduced the steps it takes to do it. It makes it easier and simpler to do." I said, "What's the benefit to you?" He goes, "Faster beer time." And his point was I can do other things. It could be leisure, go home, do things with my family and friends, or just work on something creative. Any case, beer time was that reference. But that's the secret.

Dilpreet Bindra

>> When you come back to developers and some of the things that we've done with baking in Argo into our foundation, now you also have the ability for all objects in our IaaS to be able to have that developer flow completely being automated through Git. And so now you can actually deploy VMs, databases, load balancers, and Kubernetes clusters, including the application stack, completely through the Git path, and that also simplifies the developer and what they have to do.

>> Dilpreet, I want to ask you because I get this a lot because people like VMware and , "What's going on behind the curtain?" When VCF 9, that silenced a lot of the critics, so congratulations. But a lot of people ask me, "Who's building this stuff? What are they doing?" So share some of the changes in culture and process that's going on inside Broadcom. We were talking before we came on camera. That's a great point. Share that please.

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Well, I've been at VMware for 19 years, and so I've seen a lot of different transitions and various different CEOs come to bear. And so with Hock coming in and taking on the mantle, I have to say that I'm really, really, really impressed. I've seen him understand the business from day one and the belief that he has in the product is so stark. It is amazing. He has more belief in the product than a lot of the previous CEOs did. And so what that does is drive that into the overall organization, into the way we structure ourselves, and actually allows us to move a lot faster. So when we go to Hock and we present to him, he actually enables us in such great ways. I've never had that happen before. Usually you go and present to your CEO and you get action items back. He takes action items for us and goes and make sure things get unblocked.

>> So he's removing the blockers.

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca Knight

>> And is that filtering down through the rest of the organization too in terms of how leaders approach?

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Completely, completely. Krish as well, he's been also really pivotal in driving some of that culture down. But like that Broadcom culture married with the VMware culture and the technology and the innovation we bring really is a great powerhouse in driving some of the innovation we're seeing in VCF 9.

>> Yeah, it's no secret that Broadcom, not VMware, but Broadcom proper, they don't really do a lot of marketing, but they do a lot of product development. They do a lot of engineering, they invest. You mentioned that on stage, he's investing I think 16% of, what was it, revenue or product. I can't remember the number. But there's money coming back in for development. How has that changed the velocity?

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Well, we as organization at VMware were very, very poorly run when Hock ended up taking it over. And so Hock took really good steps along with Krish to be able to make sure we streamlined the organization. And then now when you go and ask Krish or Hock for any kind of resources and so on, it's a very easy conversation. We have to make sure we understand what we're driving from a business perspective. It is all about the business and all about the customer.

>> I heard there's an ROI statement that comes in. I don't want to make this too much about internal VMware, but I wanted to get that out there. Thank you. Because I'm probably getting the PR police will be like, "Why you asking about Hock?" No, people want to know. Canonical, talk about the container revolution because that's continuing to go. I heard in the hallways here, when I ask people the questions I want kind of dig in research, what's going to make VCF successful, blah, blah, blah, the common thread is more containerized workloads is one answer, more containers. Is that accurate? Is containers key for what's going on in the product or obviously-

Mark Lewis

>> We believe so. I mean it's certainly what we've seen in the public clouds. The adoption of Kubernetes, obviously it's exactly what Dilpreet's building. It's an easy to consume service, and as a result, guess what, people consume it, back to my lazy developer analogy. It's efficient though. And so I think what we're seeing in containers, particularly for instance the chiseled containers, is people saying I don't want that to still be a cottage industry, something that I kind of handcraft and have to repetitively do, our DevSecOps story. If I could get something that is in actual fact ready for production and I start to differentiate, I have build versions of containers, I have developer versions, I have production versions, then you reach a sort of industrialization. And that industrialization point, I think, I believe is now because we're seeing it kind of breaking out in a bunch of our partners inside Canonical, particularly the software ones. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they're the tip of the spear. They're all on that, they're not just on the journey, they're kind of settling and actually fine-tuning how they do that. They're reconsidering architectures, et cetera. So that's absolutely what we're seeing happening and it's kind of why this is such an exciting partnership for us because-

Rebecca Knight

>> Well, I want to ask about where that partnership is going and how it's evolving and what customers are asking for right now. Is it about lowering costs? Is it about speeding up innovation? Is it something else?

Mark Lewis

>> I'll start. I mean, we've been partners for years.

>> Well, lay out the partnership so people get on the record. What is the partnership specifically? And then talk about VM.

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Go ahead.

Mark Lewis

>> I'll start and I'm going to leave it to Dilpreet to talk about VM. Historically, I mean, Ubuntu's obviously developers' favorite and we have a huge footprint. And the folks have worked with us over the years to use that as an operating system, as a VM, the traditional strengths of the two organizations. We have put a lot of effort into cloud native in the last few years and we've seen that really bear fruits, perhaps unsurprisingly, in large-scale cloud deployments, et cetera. And I think what we're talking about today, the reason for this partnership to extend is to really bring that into VCF.

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Exactly. Yeah. I think some of the key benefits that we have is that we, Ubuntu is like the number one cloud OS, and our job is to bring cloud on-prem. That's what our focus is. It's not just about containers or Kubernetes or so on. We want that cloud experience for our users on-prem. And so we can't do it without the number one cloud OS. Right? And Ubuntu, interestingly enough, is also the number one OS for AI. And so when we're looking at all of the new applications and how they're being formulated and how developers are formulating them, they're formulating them with Ubuntu. And so that's what makes this partnership really pivotal. If you look at the set of things that we are delivering from the innovation on Kubernetes, but also on the set of things that we're doing for bringing in all of the custom kernels that they already delivered to cloud onto VCF, that's a huge-

>> You get really reliable software.

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Yeah.

>> Talk about the open source angle because obviously open source is driving a lot of the AI right now. Obviously Kubernetes came from, is open source as well. But from a developer's perspective, that's where the action is. Everyone knows that. They're also instrumental in developing some of the new frameworks. MCP came out. The organic growth this year is a big surprise. Still need some work, people talking about all the time. But that's going to open in a new era. But again, the open source is where the innovation is. And the developers are always kicking the tires. They're the first ones to jump in and grab something, load it up, and play with it. How important is open source right now in VCF and how you guys are working together?

Mark Lewis

>> It's our identity. I mean, that's where everything comes from. And so as a result of that, I think that's part of why these things happen with us around everything that you folks have been mentioning. I think that's kind of what Dilpreet is going to be leveraging. The open source nature of it is why adoption happens, it's where the innovation is happening, and it's composable.

>> Yeah. And you get developers right out of the box with Ubuntu and Canonical.

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Yeah, yeah. VMware has been a top three in overall open source contribution with CNCF for the past N years. I think it was like the past five years we've been top three, and that's significant. We put a lot of value back into Kubernetes, a lot of value back into the open source community. We've contributed whole projects. And that's allowed us to be able to really drive this overall effort for Kubernetes and other sets of things as well.

>> All right.

Rebecca Knight

>> Great. A great conversation, both of you. Thank you so much, Dilpreet and Mark.

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Thank you.

>> Yeah.

Dilpreet Bindra

>> Thank you.

Mark Lewis

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

>> I'm Rebecca Knight for John Furrier. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE's live coverage of VMware Explore. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in enterprise tech news and analysis.