VMware Explore 2025 | Ahmar Mohammad, Broadcom & Dante Orsini, 11:11 Systems

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Ahmar Mohammad

VP, Partners, Managed Services & Solutions

Broadcom

Dante Orsini

Chief Revenue Officer

11:11 Systems

Inside Broadcom’s VMware acquisition: Simplification, strategy and partner impact

When Broadcom Inc. acquired VMware LLC, it set off more than just a headline-making transaction — it sparked a sweeping reorganization to simplify technologies, products and strategies across the company. The VMware acquisition is also reshaping the partner ecosystem, with focused innovation now steering the path forward.In a conversation with theCUBE, Dante Orsini (pictured, left), chief revenue officer of 11:11 Systems Inc., and Ahmar Mohammad (right), vice president of partners and managed services and solutions at Broadcom, broke down what this shift means for partners

play_circle_outline Welcome of guests Dante Orsini and Omar Mohamed at VMWare Explore.

play_circle_outline VMware Transforms Cloud Services with New Subscription Model and Partner Program to Simplify Customer Service and Support

play_circle_outline Exploring Managed Services and Sovereign Cloud: Elevating Data Management with Value-Added Localized Solutions Beyond Basic Licensing

play_circle_outline 11:11 Systems’ focus on full-service platform and business-critical applications support.

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Ahmar Mohammad, Broadcom & Dante Orsini, 11:11 Systems

Ahmar Mohammad

VP, Partners, Managed Services & Solutions Broadcom

Dante Orsini

Chief Revenue Officer 11:11 Systems

At VMware Explore 2025, Ahmar Mohammad, VP of Partners, Managed Services and Solutions GTM at Broadcom, and Dante Orsini, CRO at 11:11 Systems, join theCUBE’s John Furrier and Rebecca Knight to discuss how Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware is transforming the partner ecosystem and cloud strategy. Mohammad explains Broadcom’s focus on simplifying routes to market and consolidating its CSP ecosystem around deeply committed partners. He highlights how license portability creates a competitive edge for customers, ensuring flexibility across private, CSP and hypers... Read more

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What is the update on the goal of simplifying the business and the go-to-market strategy as discussed previously? add

What are the changes and requirements for partners in VMware's business model transformation, particularly in relation to cloud service providers? add

What are the trends in the market regarding managed services and differentiated solutions in cloud computing? add

What are the current projects and efforts being undertaken by 11:11, particularly regarding their use of VMware and the VCF stack? add

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Ahmar Mohammad, Broadcom & Dante Orsini, 11:11 Systems

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good afternoon everyone, and welcome back to theCube's Live coverage of VMWare Explore here in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight alongside my co-host and analyst John Furrier, I would like to welcome our next guest to the show. We have Dante Orsini, chief Revenue Officer at 11:11 Systems. Welcome. Welcome back, Dante.

Dante Orsini

>> Thank you. Great to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> And welcome back to you too, Omar Mohamed, Vice President Partners, Managed Services and Solutions, go-to-market VCF division. Thank you so much for coming back on the show.

Ahmar Mohammad

>> Oh, thank you for having us.

Rebecca Knight

>> So I'm going to actually start with you, Mohamed, because when you were last on, you mentioned the goal of simplifying the business and the go-to-market strategy, give our viewers an update on where things stand now.

Ahmar Mohammad

>> Absolutely. We have made significant progress in our simplification and rationalization of our route to market. Now we are now further simplifying or further rationalizing our CSP ecosystem as well and really consolidating it down to a selected group of fully committed customer aligned partners who do this for living. This is not a side show for them. This is not a 5% of their business or 10% of their business. This is the cake. And by doing that, we want to make sure that we can work with them closely, provide the enablement to them, provide the coverage to them, and then they can go out and serve our customers to the full potential.

Rebecca Knight

>> How does it change things for the CSP? How does it change things for them going forward?

Ahmar Mohammad

>> For the partners that stay in the program, it actually creates that bigger opportunity. It allows them to even acquire some of the partners that are going to be leaving our program and become bigger so that they can invest back into their offering, provide a better customer experience, both from a technology perspective as well as the go-to-market perspective and provide a better support experience to the customer. For the partners that will be leading the program, there is an opportunity for them to either continue till the end of their contract, which most of them till end of March 2027, or have a better opportunity to transfer or sell their book of business to the surviving partner. So there's business continuity for their end customer.

>> Dante, you've been on the Cube early days, 2012. It's funny how full circle we've come. I mean you look at that growth from that year to now. Hybrid cloud, private cloud was even talked about back then. A lot's changed right now. With Broadcom's acquisition. How would you scope the change? Where are we right now? What does the momentum look like?

Dante Orsini

>> Yeah, I mean, John, both of us have gray hair now, right? I mean it looked like young bucks back in 2012, but it's great you say that because it's been a journey for sure. And I think the part that's been interesting for me is Broadcom's done everything they said they were going to do, right? They've greatly simplified the routes to market. They've greatly simplified the platform, but most importantly, the investment. I don't think people realize, correct me if I'm wrong, it's like 19% of the revenue is being reinvested in R&D. So if anybody sat through the keynotes this morning is absolutely evident. First time ever, we've seen an entire team focus on a single stack and what that's doing to drive innovation for folks like us on the cloud side as well as the end user is huge. But you and I were joking before off set, right? We were talking about this whole opportunity being able to move workloads around like a decade ago, but Broadcom's actually delivering on that, right? Providing the best possible experience on-prem and having direct compatibility with folks like us on the cloud side.

>> And then just to follow up on that, I want to ask you get your perspective, the integration involved now in connecting environments. Enterprise Cloud is a hot sector right now because I was talking about on-prem, even mentioned on the keynote, this is like the key node, everyone on-prem because AI wants that data. And then you got Sovereign Cloud coming around the corner on an international base. So any enterprise worth their salt is going to have an AI instance of a cloud, and they're going to buy GPUs and XPUs and they're going to want to manage it in a flexible way and flex resource, this is now just standard hybrid distributed computing. What's your reaction to that? How does that render into partnering? Because it isn't just, "Hey, here's my API." It's a lot more going on. Could you share your thoughts on that?

Dante Orsini

>> A hundred percent. I think to your point, enterprises still want to make sure that they can take advantage of this big wave of innovation. But at the same time, compliance top of mind, like you mentioned Sovereign, we're a global company also, and there's so much that we work on from a network perspective that makes all this work. And frankly, it's about data management and we know that and so does the customer. So as they're looking for ways that they can be more nimble, they're looking for partners that actually have the right posture to be able to get them to market quicker. And look at the AI piece. You've got a massive bifurcation in the market. You've got a very large global enterprise that have got data scientists. They've been way out in front of this. Then you've got the mid-market that's really kind of trying to find their way at this point. And you look at the investments people need to make, it can be massive, right.

>> Omar, talk about the partner changes because you look at the business performance of VMware in the past 12 to 18 months, it's been pretty spectacular. The numbers don't lie. Watch the earnings calls all the time. Obviously Broadcom has the chip side, but on the software side, VMware has moved to subscription. They simplified, they split the routes to market. What's the biggest change in the CSPs, cloud service process, that you've altered or changed or adopted that people should know about? Because there's a business model transformation going on at VMware and with a customer. How do partners lean in? Is there a list, check, check, check, it'd be this tall to ride the roller coaster. What are the requirements?

Ahmar Mohammad

>> So the requirements, I mean, we've changed the program for being what you call open program that is basically that anybody can participate in versus two more invite-only focus program that is right for the right set of partners. Now, the criteria we use, one is a partner that is truly committed to providing VCF as a service platform, full-stack VCF platform we talked about, and we saw that in the keynote. So that's the first criteria that they have a large size that they can provide that as a managed service to the end customer. Second, as I talked about, that they do this for living. They provide that higher value-add services and generate multiple on top of just the licensing cost. They're not selling sugar, they're selling the cake and using the sugar as an ingredient to sell the full finished product.

>> A lot more integrators. I'm seeing...

Ahmar Mohammad

>> A lot more integrated, a lot more fully managed service and value-added services, not just the license itself, but the technology, the infrastructure, all the connective software as well as the application management on top of it. And third, exactly what we were talking about, who create some differentiation. For example, Sovereign Cloud as an example. Customers especially in US and even outside of US, are more interested in organizations and providers who have physical data center within their geographic boundaries that are being managed by the citizens of that particular market, whether it's Europe, whether it's Middle East, whether it's Asia, they're all interested. Partners like 11:11 Systems provide that. And so we focused on those set of partners that create the differentiated solution on what we call managed or modern private cloud, whether it be running on their own data center or what customer used to deploy on their own data center.

>> It's a lot more operating of the cloud. Dante, talk about 11:11. What are you guys doing now? Can you share some of the coolest things you're working on and examples that kind of connect the dots?

Dante Orsini

>> Yeah, for sure. So if I look at us, again, as Omar said, we're global in nature. And I think we've made a lot of investments not just in the platform itself, but also integrating all the pieces and parts that may not touch VMware. VMware's got the largest ecosystem of support for ISVs. So as an example, when we spoke in the past, our whole mission was how do you host business critical production applications, right? Well, you've got to have the right foundation with VMware, you've got to have backup, you've got to have DR, the right network, you have security, you got to have compliance, right? The list goes on and on. The idea is to be able to give somebody one consumable platform to take it all in. So right now, we're heavily vested on the VCF stack, being able to introduce what we can do with Tanzu to help folks actually drive not just the infrastructure side of containers, but application modernization. And when you look at cloud from an AI perspective, you nailed it. You got to be next to the data. So to your point, giving people a secure private environment to be able to leverage private AI is super, super important.

>> I'd say your business is looking good. One of the things we've heard from your customers, the VMware customers are the big customers, is that they can reign in their estate, number one. Two, they can focus on what they want to do.

Ahmar Mohammad

>> Correct.

>> And so that gives the deployment and operating model either to a clean, tight VCF, some say, I call it a beast of technology. It's a bill out bigger, you guys call it chock-full of value. There's a lot there. So it can manage it or you partner. This is a little bit of a different equation. So I have to ask the question, what's different now, Dante, than VMware say a few years ago? What's different? What's the different execution?

Dante Orsini

>> What I think is different is they've leveled the playing field on the platform side, but they've also been very prescriptive about who they're going to go to market with. So for folks like us that have been working with the platform since 2008, to his point, we are all in with VMware and we have been, right? So it's great to be recognized for that fact that now they want to double down their investment in folks like us because face it, this side of the market has always been the little engine that could, right? VMware struggled historically because we would always grow 30% quarter over quarter. It's like what's going on with the service provider business? And then at one point you almost over rotate because you try to throw too many resources at it. I think when Broadcom took over VMware, they recognized that they're going to level the playing field and they're going to double down their investment where they believe they can drive the most traction. And to be on the receiving end of that is actually excellent for us.

Rebecca Knight

>> So in your conversations with customers here at VMware Explorer and elsewhere, what are their pain points? What's on their mind right now and what parts of this new release of VCF do you think will be most relevant to them and most resonate with what's going on with them?

Dante Orsini

>> To me, I think that it depends on where somebody came from in the marketplace. You've got a lot of folks that may have just been using the hypervisor in the past and by now collapsing everything down and bundling it all together, yes, some folks were upset about that in the beginning. But when they take a step back and they actually digest the platform, there's been all this talk, I know you guys have been covering it about people trying to figure out a way to re-platform or am I going to lift and shift? I can tell you that when people take a second and they look at the investment and the innovation that's happening, it's like, wait a minute. There's a lot more value here. So those are the kind of conversations that we're having right now because we're also seeing people that are also trying to repatriate. They're trying to figure out, where am I going to place my workload? And we're after the mines here to say, "Okay, we want you to be cloud smart, to have the right control, the right security posture, and more importantly, we want to bring that public cloud infrastructure model for cloud native apps into your own environment."

>> We actually have data on that on the migration. The complexity and skills problem is a huge thing. It's classic total cost of ownership problem. It looks good on paper.

Dante Orsini

>> Yes.

>> Okay. And then you look at the duration, even if you can speed up the duration, it's still months and months and months. And then by workload, it's months. So if you have 10 to 100 workloads, it's just not. It's a non-starter. It just can't do it. So you've got to either figure out how to win with the infrastructure, and by the way, it's operation. You can build on top of it. And I think that's the key thing about BCF. It's true cloud scale and it's focused.

Dante Orsini

>> Exactly.

>> It's not trying to be five things.

Dante Orsini

>> Exactly.

Ahmar Mohammad

>> That's it.

>> It's one thing.

Ahmar Mohammad

>> It's one thing.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Omar, how are you thinking about the overall partner ecosystem? Where do you think things are working well and what could use a little more attention, which we'll be talking about next year?

Ahmar Mohammad

>> So as we look towards the future, we want to have a partner ecosystem that is committed, that is working with us on deploying or managing the full service, full-stack BCF for the customer, providing that whole VM-based infrastructure as well as bringing together the Kubernetes-based, container-based infrastructure as one single platform. Now, we have always said Broadcom model is we don't try to be everything for everybody when it comes to partnership. I rather have the 8 friends that I hang out with versus 1,200 Facebook friends there. Yes, on paper they look good as 1200 Facebook friends and I can have bragging rights, but I'd rather hang out with those 8 or 10 friends that are truly, that I can lean in. I can provide enablement to those partners. I can service them better. We can have a direct relationship, help them grow, help them foster their customer and grow their customers better. That's what we are focused on. All the optimization and all the changes you have seen in the program in simplifying it, creating the level playing field, focusing less with more. That's the opportunity for us to help grow these partners so they can achieve that scale, achieve that profitability, and at the end of the day, service their customer better.

>> My final question, just so you don't get this in real quick, license portability came up last year.

Ahmar Mohammad

>> Yes.

>> Can you comment on that? How's that going?

Ahmar Mohammad

>> Absolutely. So it's a big, what I call competitive advantage for us as well as an opportunity for our partners. So let me tell you, for us, it's about going to the customers and making sure that they are not paying twice. They acquire the subscription, they hold the entitlement, and then it's up to them where they would like to run that subscription, whether on their private cloud or in a CSP or in a hyperscaler, they are the one who are in the deciding chair to decide where they want to run that. From a partner perspective, they don't have to charge the customer twice. Partners like 11:11. System can onboard a customer, provide a discount on the offering that acknowledging the investment they have already made in the licensing. So it just smoothen out the customer acquisition cost.

>> Simplifies it.

Ahmar Mohammad

>> Simplifies it. Plus it also takes the guessing work out of the game. If customer has a plan of migration over the next 18 months, two years, how many licenses should I buy? And if I accelerate my deployment or migration, will my investment be lost? Now they don't have to worry about it. They acquire the subscription for the three years, four years, and that subscription lives with them regardless of whether they're running it on-prem or in a managed environment like 11:11 system.

Rebecca Knight

>> Simplify, simplify, simplify. I love it. Dante, Omar, thank you both so much for coming on theCUBE, a really great conversation.

Ahmar Mohammad

>> Always a pleasure.

Dante Orsini

>> Thanks.

Ahmar Mohammad

>> Thank you.

Rebecca Knight

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