Broadcom’s first VMware Explore event as the one paying the bills was highlighted by CEO Hock Tan’s boisterous mocking of the public cloud and legacy data centers, but analysts that attended the event pointed to more subdued action around event branding and changes to VMware platforms and services that could alter how enterprises choose to interact with the vendor moving forward.

Rachel Stephens, senior analyst at RedMonk, in a blog post made the most thought-invoking observations by pointing to an inconsistent level of “VMware” branding at its own event. Stephens referenced a social media post that called out an absence of the VMware name to some of the event's “Explore” signs, pontificating that this could be something or nothing.

“There has been tremendous upheaval in the VMware ecosystem since Broadcom’s acquisition: multiple rounds of employee layoffs, partnership upheaval, shifts in product focus and pricing,” Stephens wrote. “I think one reason people are looking at details like conference branding is they are trying to read tea leaves: are there any signals out there that reveal Broadcom’s sentiment towards the VMware brand at large?”

“I think Broadcom is committed to their investment,” Stephens added, “but that’s not the same as being committed to the VMware brand. What I do know is that even asking this question is a pretty stark contrast from VMworld 2018, when the keynote opened with former CEO Pat Gelsinger displaying a temporary VMware tattoo on his entire forearm.”

Stepping back toward more concrete observations, analysts continued to highlight Tan's business-focused approach to VMware's future.

Tan set that tone during a keynote speech where the executive touted Broadcom’s progress in integrating VMware since the acquisition closed 9 months ago and claiming VMware’s future is in private cloud and artificial intelligence (AI).

Tan’s first round of business was to state in no uncertain terms that VMware was now a business following the acquisition and not whatever it was before that allowed it to grow into something Broadcom needed to spend nearly $70 billion to purchase.

“You’re going to see a change here at Explore this year, sorry, … because we are serious businesspeople. So are you. We are all about business at Broadcom, and we’re here to help you run your business more effectively,” Tan proclaimed, before adding, “we’re not here to show you bright shiny objects, and talking of bright shiny objects.”

Stephens noted this approach differed from past VMware management, specifically pointing to how Gelsinger spent most of his tenure in acquisition mode, where Tan is focused on strict monetization.

“Broadcom CEO Hock Tan appears more singularly focused in his vision for VMware’s future, and it is not clear that he views all the technologies that came into the VMware fold under Gelsinger as an essential part of that future,” Stephens wrote. “While Gelsinger targeted adjacent growth technology areas, Tan appears focused on prioritizing and monetizing the offerings that are already highly valued and in use by the company’s customers.”

Others also noted Tan’s no-nonsense take on the VMware business that was done in front of an audience presumably with a long history of working with VMware. Broadcom management has boasted about focusing VMware following the acquisition on a single-digit number of products, or SKUs, as opposed to the dozens of customized options that bloated its sales book.

“Just this radical simplification,” Steven Dickens, VP and practice leader at The Futurum Group, stated in a post-Explore podcast on Tan’s leadership approach for VMware. “Stripping away of all the bloat from a marketing point of view, from a go-to-market point of view, from a product point of view, from a SKUs point of view.”

Tan explained that this simplification would allow enterprises to correct legacy moves to the public cloud that have saddled those companies with higher costs and lower productivity.

“Just look behind the curtains in your environment, which is why in the first place you moved to public cloud, there’s plenty of room for improvement,” Tan said. “You inherited legacy of data centers, which has created best-of-breed in compute, in storage, in networking. You’re very siloed. You are so screwed because silos don’t work well together and it’s painful for you to deliver services to your internal customers. When something breaks, as it often does, everybody is pointing finger at each other. Makes you less resilient. Days to find root causes. You want to deploy a new application, you need to write a ticket. You need to write a ticket to your IT department and you might just get that virtual machine two months later.”

Is Tanzu on the block? This simplification could also compress some of the platforms that seem to have so far survived the purge.

Stephens noted that Tan’s “bright shiny object” jab could spell doom for VMware services and technology outside of its core Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform, specifically the Kubernetes-focused Tanzu platform based on its $550 million Heptio acquisition. Stephens pointed to management commentary that could see VMware lean more on its Pivotal-based Cloud Foundry container orchestration platform instead of its Kubernetes-focused Tanzu offering.

“All together, there were signals that read as the company renewing its focus on the assets from the Pivotal acquisition over the Heptio acquisition, and prioritizing solutions centered around its VM-centric past more broadly,” Stephens observed.

Broadcom did roll out some new features for the Tanzu “10” iteration, including support for VMware’s various AI products; an application-centric layer to make it easier to manage deployments; and greater support for air-gapped, off-network private cloud environments, which garnered some accolades. This followed on past comments from Broadcom management that it would continue investing in Tanzu.

Paul Nashawaty, lead principal analyst at The Futurum Group, noted in a report that the Tanzu updates does provide that platform with a competitive advantage over similar cloud-native platforms from rivals like Red Hat OpenShift, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) “due to its deep integration with the VMware ecosystem. This integration can provide organizations with a smoother transition to cloud-native architectures, especially for those already using VMware products.”

However, Forrester Principal Analyst Naveen Chhabra in a blog post warned that “with the change in focus to on-prem, you should ask how long Broadcom will maintain integrations with the hyperscalers as it does today.”

Where were the partners? Analysts also pointed to a notably different partner dynamic at the event, most notably a lack of those folks that typically were core to the VMware Explore experience.

“All the prior VMware events boasted a full show floor, with tech vendors demonstrating integrations and capabilities on top of VMware technologies,” Chhabra wrote. “This year, the audience clearly missed the tech partner vibe, as only a few partners joined the show and even diamond sponsors limited their booth sizes.”

Stephens linked this change to Broadcom’s changes to VMware’s operations, specifically the evolving partner program.

“I talked to several VMware partners on the expo floor who expressed both the difficulty of navigating the changes in the partner program, as well as the challenges of navigating the layoffs and employee turnover within VMware post-acquisition,” Stephens wrote, adding, “partnerships are not just contracts. They are interpersonal relationships, and those interpersonal relationships can suffer during times of great turnover and uncertainty.”