The VMware Reckoning: Broadcom, AI, and the Future of Enterprise Infrastructure
Enterprise IT didn’t plan for this problem—but now it has to solve it.
In this episode of The CTO Advisor Podcast, Keith Townsend sits down with Lynn Comp, Head of Data Center Market Readiness at Intel, for a candid, unsugarcoated conversation about how Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has fundamentally disrupted the enterprise infrastructure status quo.
For years, VMware was treated as a solved problem—a stable foundation for virtualization, cloud, and now AI workloads. That assumption is gone. What many enterprises are realizing too late is that VMware isn’t just a hypervisor—it’s deeply embedded in their operating model, talent strategy, disaster recovery plans, and DevOps workflows
.
In this conversation, Keith and Lynn unpack:
-
Why VMware exits are not “migrations,” but organizational rewrites
-
The hidden costs beyond licensing: skills, change management, and operational risk
-
Why simply “replacing the hypervisor” is a dangerous oversimplification
-
How containers, OpenShift, Nutanix, and cloud-native platforms fit—or don’t
-
The reality of cloud repatriation and why economics are forcing hard decisions
-
Where AI fits into this disruption—and where it absolutely does not (yet)
-
How technologies like CXL and next-gen Xeon platforms enable more adaptable infrastructure strategies
-
Why VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) remains compelling for some enterprises despite the upheaval
This episode is not about vendor cheerleading or easy answers. It’s about responsibility, tradeoffs, and making infrastructure decisions you can actually defend three years from now.
If you’re a CTO, CIO, architect, or infrastructure leader staring down VMware renewal conversations—or trying to reconcile AI ambitions with legacy reality—this episode is required listening.
Part 2 will dive deeper into AI-native infrastructure and what enterprises should realistically expect next.
