VMware Explore 2025 | Rick Walsworth, VMware

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Rick Walsworth

Director of Product Marketing

VMware

play_circle_outline Emphasis on private AI deployment at scale and infrastructure monitoring capabilities.

play_circle_outline Addressing customer feedback about integrating AI into the existing platform.

play_circle_outline Enhancing VCF Architecture: Customizing Workload Domains and Bridging Heritage Environments Through Strategic Partnerships

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Rick Walsworth, VMware

Rick Walsworth

Director of Product Marketing VMware

In this VMware Explore 2025 interview, Rick Walsworth, director of product marketing at VMware, joins theCUBE’s Paul Nashawaty and Rebecca Knight to break down the latest innovations in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 and what they mean for enterprise IT. Walsworth highlights how VMware is embedding Private AI as a core platform capability, giving customers the ability to deploy AI at scale without additional costs or complexity. He explains how enterprises can now monitor GPU health, leverage long-standing VMware tools like vMotion and DRS for GPU-based wo... Read more

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What was delivered in VCF 9 regarding the deployment of private AI at scale and its monitoring capacity? add

What feedback was received regarding the adoption of platforms and services, specifically in relation to AI and its integration into existing systems? add

What are the benefits of using a VCF architecture in managing different types of workloads? add

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Rick Walsworth, VMware

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Rebecca Knight

>> Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to theCUBE's Live coverage of VMware Explorer here at the Venetian in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, alongside top analyst Paul Nashawaty, thank you so much for coming on.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Great to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> So we're talking product marketing.

Paul Nashawaty

>> We are talking product marketing, we're talking VCF 9.0. Rick is here to join us.

Rebecca Knight

>> Exactly.

Paul Nashawaty

>> It's awesome. Lots of excitement at the show.

Rebecca Knight

>> Indeed. Well, let me introduce Rick.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Yeah.

Rebecca Knight

>> So I'd like to bring on Rick Walsworth, director of product marketing at VMware.

Rick Walsworth

>> Glad to be here.

Rebecca Knight

>> Thank you so much for coming on the show, Rick.

Rick Walsworth

>> Really appreciate it.

Rebecca Knight

>> So VMware has been through a lot of transformation recently, and that's a vast understatement, really.

Rick Walsworth

>> That is.

Rebecca Knight

>> So many new product announcements this week. Tell our viewers a little bit about what are the biggest takeaways right now.

Rick Walsworth

>> To me, out of the gate, it's the ability to be able to run AI natively within VCF, right. We've heard from our customers, they want to move to AI, they want to do so, but why should it be an additional service? Why should I have to pay extra to be able to do it? So by bringing it in as core to the platform, we've done two things. We've already taken advantage of the integration that we've done, deep integration there, but now we're also now turning it into a service. So now you can literally have private AI as a service to be able to deploy at scale.

Paul Nashawaty

>> So let's talk about private AI, right. I mean, so this is a big kind of initiative. It's kind of a big theme that we're seeing at the show. I know it's something that's been talked about for a while. What is happening with VCF 9 and private AI and what does it really mean for enterprises?

Rick Walsworth

>> Right. Well, what we did within VCF 9 is deliver the ability to be able to enable private AI to be deployed at scale. That includes the ability to be able to monitor all of the underlying infrastructure. So I can look at my GPUs, I can tell health on it, I know when they're starting to run a little hot. And then the ability to be able to leverage some of our core tools that the VMware users have used for years on that, DRS, vMotion, I can use those now for VM-based workloads running GPUs. So I could switch a GPU from essentially one host to another non-disruptively.

Rebecca Knight

>> And were you hearing that from customers in terms of that being a major pain point in terms of why you're going in this direction?

Rick Walsworth

>> The question we asked is, "What will it take to have you adopt these platforms and these services on top of the platform?" And that was one of the pieces of feedback that came, make it part of the platform just like storage and compute and network is, AI should be part of the platform as well.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Yeah, so there's kind of this thing happening, this evolution. Modernization is a treadmill, it happens all the time. There's activities that are continuous. How do you bridge the gap between heritage environments and what's new in VCF 9? Because that's a big thing right now. People want to get to this new motion, but they also don't want to silo themselves into a new kind of silo, right?

Rick Walsworth

>> And it's really a big benefit of what VCF does, right. Because within a VCF architecture, I have a management domain, but then I have workload domains. I could customize those workload domains to be able to optimize it for specific types of workloads. If I have traditional database applications, I'm running on it, I could stand up workload domains that support that. If I want to bring AI into it, I can essentially supercharge those workload domains with GPUs and have the ability to do that. Containers is the same way. I can bring containers in as a first-class citizen within a VMware environment and provide the ability to be able to scale those services for production-type deployments.

Rebecca Knight

>> When you change the way work gets done in an organization and the way work flows through an organization, oftentimes priorities shift. Are you seeing customers changing their priorities when they have these capabilities?

Rick Walsworth

>> Yeah, great question. And when we look at it, we look at technology as being only one piece of the puzzle. You have to look at the people and the process that get associated with that as well. If you ignore that, the technology doesn't matter. So when we look at adopting new technologies in there, we try to think about what does it take for somebody to consume it, to deploy it at scale, because then they're getting value from it. And so where we're focused, and this is a big, Paul, back to your point, this was a big emphasis within 9.0, what can we do to be able to essentially accelerate that time to value? Because the faster they can get the value, now they want to start consuming those cores and applying additional services to it. So by providing that, the ability to be able to deploy this at scale, it now gives us the ability to be able to do so and help our customers get to that value quicker.

Paul Nashawaty

>> All right, Rick, I want to pick up our conversation where we ended it last night. We were talking about how modernization was happening. We're talking about people moving to the public cloud. In our research, what we found is there's a lot of workloads that are moving to the public cloud. We found that 46% of workloads are moving to the public cloud, but what we're really finding is interesting. Only 11% of organizations were developing cloud-native applications on-prem, but yet in what we found in the next two years, that number jumps to over 33%.

Rick Walsworth

>> Exactly.

Paul Nashawaty

>> And so this repatriation coming back from the public cloud on-prem.

Rick Walsworth

>> Yep.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Right. So the value proposition of having the private clouds and having the on-prem activities is really starting to resonate, right?

Rick Walsworth

>> Well, it is, but I'll clear up one misnomer. A lot of times when people think private cloud, they think on-prem or on-prem only.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Right, right.

Rick Walsworth

>> The way we look at it is that private cloud is an operating model. How do I deploy systems? How do I engage the people and the process and the tools as a way to be able to do that? So I can deploy a private cloud on-prem 'cause most of our customers have, but I can also take that and extend it to an edge site. I can also take that and extend it to a CSP or a sovereign cloud or a hyperscaler and essentially provide the exact same experience. 'Cause think about it from a developer's standpoint, when I'm logging in, when I'm checking in code, I shouldn't care whether it's running on-prem in a data center-

Paul Nashawaty

>> No, not at all....

Rick Walsworth

>> at an edge or in a hyperscaler. It should be the same exact experience. And that's exactly what we've done.

Paul Nashawaty

>> I think a few years ago when we had this conversation, I was talking about the hybrid cloud and public cloud and private cloud, and I made the comment, I said, "Not to be clairvoyant and look into the future and think about what's happening," but I was thinking, "We're going to lose every word in front of cloud and it's just going to be cloud."

Rick Walsworth

>> Cloud, right.

Paul Nashawaty

>> And it's just going to, 'cause it doesn't matter. Locations really are not going to matter.

Rick Walsworth

>> Exactly.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Actually, we're seeing that in the same research that 20% of organizations are saying that their application portability is critical. 67% say it's very important to them. And that is because moving the application, I'm not saying I'm moving the workload, but moving the application around is important.

Rick Walsworth

>> Yeah. Well, and think about this too, is that let's say I make an investment on-prem, right. I can buy VCF on-prem, I have all these license entitlements, I use it. I also have the ability to essentially repurpose those licenses in a cloud.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Right.

Rick Walsworth

>> So I can essentially take the same license that I'm using on-prem, I can now essentially reapply those cores in a cloud provider, whether it be a CSP, a sovereign cloud, or a hyperscaler, and now I have full portability of not only the workloads, but also of the license entitlements at the same time.

Rebecca Knight

>> So Rick, you made an astute point earlier, and it's something we talk a lot about on theCUBE, that it's not just the technology, it's the people and the processes and getting the buy-in order to do that. Can you share a specific example of a company that's either been able to scale or innovate faster with this?

Rick Walsworth

>> I can't name the company.

Rebecca Knight

>> It's okay. You don't have to name names.

Rick Walsworth

>> What's shifted is the fact that the conversations that we're having are now with the C-suite, right. Whereas before we had to work with the admins and then get to their boss and then get to their boss's boss. It had to work up. By starting at that C-suite and providing a very clear business value proposition. It starts to now become where they're actually saying to their teams that they need to take a closer look at this. So by opening those doors and having the proof points that we have as a way to be able to do that, it really gives us a mechanism to be able to accelerate those deployments.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Yeah. So with that said, right, 'cause you're moving in the messaging up stack, it's not about the practitioner as much as it's more about the business value, which is really an expansion of where you were not too long ago, right. So let's talk about some of the recent announcements. I got the event here today. There's partnerships with AMD, there's partnerships with Canonical. I'd love to hear more your perspective of those.

Rick Walsworth

>> So a little bit of a different area. So if you think about the relationship with AMD, it's now to essentially be able to provide customer's choice in terms of which GPU infrastructure they want to deploy as part of it. Obviously we've been working with NVIDIA for a long, long time as part of that. There's a lot of sunk investment into that, and we are absolutely seeing the return on that. But what customers have also asked for is choice. They want the ability to have choice in which GPUs they deploy. They want the ability to be able to deploy on CPUs as well. So these private AI services are not unique to a single GPU. We have the ability to go into a multi-accelerator environment and extend that out across multiple GPU formats.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Yeah, we have Paul Turner on, Paul was talking about the partnership and he was kind of going down the same path.

Rick Walsworth

>> Right.

Paul Nashawaty

>> So yeah, I think that's really interesting. But specifically, now let's talk about Canonical, 'cause Canonical, that's really interesting to me 'cause it's really focused on that DevOps and that dev space, the impacts of the workloads on VCF 9, what does that mean?

Rick Walsworth

>> Well, so think about it this way, right. We're essentially leveraging Ubuntu and the Canonical chiseled containers as a way to be able to essentially trim down those containers. And so by doing that, it's a smaller footprint, but at the same time, I am lowering my security exposure, right. Now, I'm going into an environment where I'm now essentially just working with the essential components of it, leveraging all the work that they've done and the adoption that they've done because it's a very ubiquitous solution, but now bringing it into a VCF environment. So we're really excited about that. And then going back to your question earlier about AI, this is actually going to help accelerate deployment of AI on our platform as well.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Cool.

Rebecca Knight

>> So when the acquisition was announced, there was some skepticism among customers-

Paul Nashawaty

>> Of course....

Rebecca Knight

>> too, and concerns about the costs and pricing, but as you can see by the numbers, the growth has been quite astronomical. What do you see as VMware's biggest growth opportunities in the years ahead?

Rick Walsworth

>> Well, certainly AI. I see that as a huge growth opportunity to be able to have a platform that supports AI applications at scale as part of that. And then you look at the ecosystem that gets built around that. We want to be able to support that ecosystem and across, as I mentioned, different accelerator technologies, be able to provide that level of choice as part of it. What I've noticed though is that the tone of this show versus last show. Last show, there was a lot of emotional response. Let's call it what it is.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Sure, yeah.

Rick Walsworth

>> There was a lot of emotional response based on that.

Paul Nashawaty

>> That's a nice way to put it.

Rick Walsworth

>> I think those users have now past that point, and now they're trying to solve problems. I mean, the conversations we've had here on the show floor, the conversations I've had in one-on-one customer meetings fall around two areas. One is we have put our money where our mouth is relative to innovation and delivering on capabilities on the roadmap. And the other thing that's kind of positive is that, a lot of the capabilities that were delivered in 9.0 were things that we were hearing from our customers a year and a half, two years ago in terms of what they needed to be successful in there. And it's gratifying to them to be able to see that now we've actually delivered upon those promises.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Yeah, there's no doubt. I mean, I think you're spot on. Last year it was all, "Oh, licenses changes, oh, the world's coming to an end." The reality of it is is, people have to look at their environment and understand that at least the way I see it is VMware as a company had a whole bunch of different things. VMware as a product is streamlined and it reduces the complexity and it allows for the rapid innovation that you accelerate your roadmap, drive to those things. I've seen those results happen. That's awesome. The show is really amplifying that. So I do agree with you that it's more about the rubber hitting the road now.

Rick Walsworth

>> Exactly.

Paul Nashawaty

>> I think the other key factor that people need to take into consideration, and you touched on this a little bit, it is people, process and technology, right. There's an element of the emotional response, "I'm going to remove VMware," it's like, but what about the learnings of the tech and all that? It's not about the technical stack, but the learning and the skill gaps and all the other things that go along with it.

Rick Walsworth

>> Skill gaps.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Skill gaps.

Rick Walsworth

>> That's the big one.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Big, yeah.

Rick Walsworth

>> You think about the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of admins that have grown up-

Paul Nashawaty

>> Absolutely....

Rick Walsworth

>> with vSphere and DRS and vMotion as their core tools, to take that away from them-

Paul Nashawaty

>> Yeah, it's crazy.

Rick Walsworth

>> Right. Exactly.

Paul Nashawaty

>> Well, the number one thing I hear from CIOs is modernization. We need to modernize our environment. The two barriers, complexity and skill gap issues.

Rick Walsworth

>> Yeah.

Paul Nashawaty

>> You reduce those.

Rick Walsworth

>> Right. Exactly. That's our intent-

Paul Nashawaty

>> That's your intent....

Rick Walsworth

>> and our mission.

Rebecca Knight

>> So looking ahead to VMware Explore 2026-

Rick Walsworth

>> Wow....

Rebecca Knight

>> what are you wanting to think? What do you want to be talking about next year at this time-

Rick Walsworth

>> Right. No, great-...

Rebecca Knight

>> in terms of where the roadmap is today and what you want out of the future?

Rick Walsworth

>> Not only the roadmap, obviously the roadmap is important, right. And so delivering on the commitments that we've made and some of the announcements we've made here, that's very important. To me what's more important, is the ability to be able to look back and see how customers are now adopting and consuming the platform. Because again, going back to it, that's where they get value. Because what we want is want to be able to make sure that as they reach the end of their period, the end of their subscription period, and they're looking at renewal, we want that renewal to be a no-brainer.

Rebecca Knight

>> Yeah.

Rick Walsworth

>> And if indeed they're seeing value on the platform and they've adopted what they intended to adopt as part of that, it should be a no-brainer decision. That's what we're going for.

Rebecca Knight

>> Excellent. Well, a great note to end on, Rick. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Rick Walsworth

>> Appreciate being here.

Rebecca Knight

>> A pleasure having you.

Rick Walsworth

>> Yeah, thank you.

Rebecca Knight

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