Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) continues to evolve from a turnkey infrastructure stack to a modern app substrate. At stake for VCF’s ongoing development is striking a balance between providing an “easy button” for cloud infrastructure and an open, flexible platform aligned with the evolution of Kubernetes.

Meanwhile, open source and private cloud remain essential components of VCF’s DNA, with Broadcom, one of the leading Kubernetes contributors, continuing to align VCF with the open source community.

During KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026, Broadcom’s Jad El-Zein, technologist, and Myles Gray, a senior technical marketing architect at VMware/Broadcom, discuss this and other concerns — such as cloud-native on private cloud and how VCF can serve platform engineering teams — on The New Stack podcast.

This interview was recorded live in Amsterdam during KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026, and centers on the shifting landscape of cloud-native technology, the resurgence of private cloud, the integration of Kubernetes into core enterprise infrastructure, and how VCF supports it all for at-scale operations and platform engineering teams.

Private cloud’s full-circle return

There is a notable shift in the industry as enterprises move workloads back to private clouds, driven by growing concerns about data sovereignty and a desire for native open-source stacks. Broadcom is responding by focusing on a strategy that prioritizes on-premises stability over a SaaS model.

“And what we’re seeing is that stack that has now become cloud native, and the enterprise fully adopted it is now coming back on-prem… But we’re bringing the community in with us more than I’ve seen it in the past.” — Jad El-Zein

“And what we’re seeing is that stack that has now become cloud native, and the enterprise fully adopted it is now coming back on-prem,” El-Zein tells The New Stack. “But we’re bringing the community in with us more than I’ve seen it in the past.”

AI fuels sovereignty concerns

Data sovereignty concerns are largely due to AI adoption, a key factor driving the recent shift in the cloud-native environment toward private cloud. El-Zein says that the emergence of AI also remains a key reason organizations are moving their stacks back to private clouds.

This is part of the “full circle” trend back to private cloud infrastructure, El-Zein says. 

Open source replaces proprietary defaults

The quality of open source projects has reached a level where proprietary software is no longer the default choice for high-end features. During the interview, El-Zein emphasized VMware by Broadcom’s role in Broadcom’s history as a top-five contributor to Kubernetes and its commitment to donating projects like Velero, Contour, and Harbor to the CNCF.

“Open source is of such high quality nowadays that you don’t necessarily need something completely proprietary to do that,” El-Zein says.

VMware by Broadcom has moved away from treating Kubernetes as a bolt-on addition. Instead, it has become the fundamental control plane for the entire platform, enabling a “public cloud operating model” on-premises, where storage, networking, and compute are all managed through declarative Kubernetes APIs, Gray tells The New Stack. 

“Kubernetes is fundamental to how we are building our platform, too,” Gray says.

“It’s all about apps, right?… And why should developers ever have to think about pivoting across two platforms?” — Jad El-Zein

Meanwhile, the distinction between containers and VMs is becoming secondary to the application’s needs. This trend is becoming even more apparent as platform engineering evolves. 

The goal is to provide a single pipeline where developers can consume both through a standard contract, such as a Kubernetes pod spec, regardless of how the infrastructure instantiates the workload, El-Zein says.

“It’s all about apps, right?” El-Zein says. “And why should developers ever have to think about pivoting across two platforms?”

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