VMware Cloud Foundation: Why Going Halfway Will Hurt Your ROI

CIOs today face an inflection point. Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is being positioned as the definitive private and hybrid cloud operating model. At VMware Explore, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan made the case plainly:

“With VCF 9.0, private cloud now outperforms public cloud.”

The pitch is simple: consolidate compute, storage, networking, and automation into a single VMware-managed stack and enjoy a consistent private cloud experience.

But here’s the hard truth: if you only adopt vSphere or partial components, while paying for the full VCF subscription, your organization will never see the ROI.

VCF is not a hypervisor license. It’s an all-in platform. Using it as “just vSphere” is like buying a luxury car and never leaving first gear — the cost remains premium, but the value never materializes.

The Full VCF Stack: More Than a Hypervisor

VCF isn’t one product — it’s a portfolio of tightly integrated components. To get value, enterprises must use the entire ecosystem. Here are the major pieces (depending on edition and version, ~12+ components):

• vSphere – Core hypervisor for compute virtualization.
• vSAN – Software-defined storage, replacing SAN/NAS with hyper-converged nodes.
• NSX – Software-defined networking, microsegmentation, and security.
• SDDC Manager – Orchestrates and automates lifecycle of the entire stack.
• Aria Automation (formerly vRealize Automation) – Self-service provisioning and governance.
• Aria Operations (formerly vRealize Operations) – Performance monitoring and capacity planning.
• Aria Operations for Logs (Log Insight) – Centralized log management.
• Aria Operations for Networks (vRealize Network Insight) – Network visibility and analytics.
• Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager – Deployment and lifecycle management for Aria components.
• Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) – Kubernetes distribution integrated into vSphere.
• HCX – Workload mobility and cloud migration platform.
• NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi) – Application delivery controller and load balancing.

Each of these plays a role in delivering the private cloud promise: unified operations, automation, consistent governance, and hybrid mobility.

If a CIO chooses to adopt only vSphere, or vSphere + vSAN, but ignores NSX, Aria, or Tanzu, they are essentially paying for a luxury bundle and using only the base model. The ROI disappears.

Why Partial Adoption Kills ROI

• Cost Misalignment
• Lost Automation Benefits
• Inconsistent Security
• Cloud Mobility Gap
• Kubernetes Future Readiness

In short: If your teams are not ready for full-stack adoption, paying for VCF now will create a financial sinkhole.

The Best-of-Breed Alternative: Why Some Enterprises Are Better Off Without VCF

Here’s where CIOs must weigh strategy. Almost everything VCF delivers has strong, proven alternatives in the enterprise stack:

• Networking: Cisco ACI or Juniper Contrail deliver fabric-wide SDN across physical and virtual domains, often superior for heterogeneous environments.
• Storage: Enterprise arrays (Dell EMC PowerStore, NetApp, Pure) provide richer data services, higher density, and independent lifecycle management compared to vSAN.
• Compute: Blade servers (HPE Synergy, Cisco UCS) allow compute scaling independent of storage refresh, with deep fabric integration.
• Automation & Monitoring: Tools like Ansible, ServiceNow, Cisco DNA, Splunk, and Prometheus/Grafana give multi-vendor coverage and flexibility.
• Kubernetes: Red Hat OpenShift, Rancher, or hyperscaler-managed Kubernetes often outperform Tanzu in flexibility and ecosystem.

For organizations that already operate these platforms, forcing a transition to VCF means abandoning mature investments for a vendor lock-in premium.

Where Enterprises Really Are Today

Most large enterprises don’t live in an “all VMware” world:

• Power Systems for IBM workloads
• SAP HANA nodes on bare metal
• Oracle RAC clusters
• Dedicated GPU farms for AI/ML
• Traditional bare metal servers alongside VMware clusters

In these scenarios, VCF cannot replace the heterogeneous mix outright. A best-of-breed model that integrates VMware with Cisco, NetApp, Pure, or HPE ecosystems often remains the more rational choice — at least in the near term.

However, CIOs must also recognize the direction Broadcom is pushing. With the new licensing model, VMware is explicitly encouraging (some would say forcing) enterprises to move toward full VCF compliance. In practice, this means:

• vSphere “only” deployments will face higher costs and diminishing support.
• Integration flexibility with third-party storage or networking will become more constrained.
• The economic logic is structured so that unless you adopt the entire VCF stack, you won’t realize any ROI — yet you’ll still bear the full subscription cost.

This creates a strategic tension:

• Rational today → leverage best-of-breed and protect prior investments.
• Viable tomorrow → acknowledge that Broadcom’s endgame is an all-VCF world, and CIOs who delay this decision risk higher cost penalties and operational roadblocks later.

TCO Comparison: The Financial Penalty of Going Halfway

Strategy comparison

Key CIO takeaway: If you cannot commit to full VCF adoption, the partial path is the worst option — you pay premium pricing but receive only incremental benefit.

The CIO’s Balancing Act

So, when does VCF make sense?

• If your enterprise is 90%+ VMware-centric, ready to adopt major components, and willing to retrain teams.
• If you want single-vendor lifecycle accountability and are prepared for multi-year lock-in.
• If your cloud strategy hinges on private cloud first, with limited reliance on heterogeneous platforms.

When is a best-of-breed approach smarter?

• If you have heavy investments in Cisco, NetApp, Pure, HPE, or other enterprise platforms.
• If workloads demand specialized performance or data services that vSAN/NSX cannot match.
• If you value vendor flexibility as a hedge against licensing model changes and cost escalation.

Final Word to CIOs

VCF is being positioned as the inevitable private cloud future. But it only delivers ROI if you commit to using it fully — vSphere alone will never justify the premium.

Hock Tan is right: private cloud is back. But the winning private cloud is not defined by vendor marketing — it is defined by your workload mix, your operational readiness, and your appetite for lock-in.

The decision isn’t “VCF or nothing.” The decision is whether your organization is ready for full VCF adoption today? — and if not, forcing it will do more harm than good.

Coming Next: Life Beyond VMware

In my next post, we’ll explore the flip side of the debate:

• What if your organization decides not to go “all in” on VMware?
• Which alternative platforms (Nutanix, OpenStack, Azure Stack HCI, Red Hat OpenShift, Virtuozzo options) offer a credible path away from VMware lock-in?
• Can you actually reduce cost, retain flexibility, and still deliver the private/hybrid cloud experience your business demands?

We’ll unpack migration strategies, workload mapping, and exit planning frameworks — so CIOs can evaluate whether moving beyond VMware is even a card on the table in the near future? or if aligning fully with Broadcom’s VCF remains the pragmatic path forward.

Written by Syed Waqar Uddin - Chief Cloud Architect specializing in platform engineering and cloud architecture.