Broadcom is opening a new lower vSphere tier within its VMware portfolio targeted at customers that might not need all the power and cost of what the vendor offers via its traditional vSphere hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) or halo VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platforms.

The new vSphere Express service is targeted at “essential virtualization” needs.

Prashanth Shenoy, VP of product marketing for Broadcom’s VCF division, explained during a press briefing that the offering was targeted at smaller resource needs, adding that it also comes with “all the key capabilities” of the core vSphere hypervisor. This includes its vMotion live migration technology, High Availability (HA) feature, vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS), vCenter Quick Patch, zero-trust security, and the Trusted Platform Module (TPM).

“This is really targeted toward what we call the smaller virtualization environments, up to 128 cores, where customers still want that essential virtualization capability that vSphere provides and don't want a full-stack private cloud or even an enterprise-grade virtualization foundation, which we have with VCF, and that's where this product really fits in,” Shenoy said, adding that its genesis came from finding a platform to serve users that did not need all the power of its VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) offering.

“We started listening to a lot of our lower-end customers who didn't really want the VVF but wanted the core virtualization capability and that's really meant for that market,” Shenoy said.

The new tier is also compatible with the recently launched vSphere 9 update and is set to begin rolling out during the first quarter of Broadcom’s fiscal 2027, which begins next month.

The new lower-tier option continues Broadcom’s ongoing vSphere alterations.

Broadcom shortly after closing its purchase of VMware upgraded vSphere Foundation with more storage, and also brought back the vSphere Enterprise Plus name as a new option for its vSphere Standard product that sat below vSphere Foundation. Broadcom had previously ditched the vSphere Enterprise Plus name when it consolidated its vSphere offerings to just Standard and Foundation following the close of its VMware acquisition.

“We have provided a wide variety of offering for customers of various sizes and where they are in the journey,” Shenoy said at that time of the new layered approach. “If they want a full private cloud platform, they go with VMware Cloud Foundation. If they want an enterprise-class HCI hyperconverged infrastructure platform they can go with vSphere Foundation. Or if they just want to start with compute virtualization they can go with vSphere Enterprise Plus or vSphere Standard.”

VCF update parade

Shenoy during the latest presentation also touted a handful of already announced and new features set to be integrated into VCF. This includes an automated, day-zero deployment service for VMware’s Private AI Cloud; native object storage capabilities; VCF infrastructure configuration management and compliance; Virtual Private Cloud (VCP) policy-based connectivity; and disaster recovery native in VCF and VVF.

VMware’s VCF platform recently garnered a 9.1.1 update that was heavy on security updates tied to Anthropic’s Claude Mythos AI vulnerability searcher and corresponding Project Glasswing. Krish Prasad, SVP and GM for VCF at Broadcom, explained to SDxCentral in an interview at the vendor’s VMware Explore event that the importance of those updates required Broadcom to alter its update cycle plans.

“When Mythos first came up customers were all like, ‘hey the priority is secure the environment,’ and so we made a commitment to customers that we are going to prioritize that and what that meant is some of the feature, things that we are working on, we are going to delay and put this as the priority. So that's essentially what is happening,” Prasad said in a separate interview with SDxCentral at the event. “If you think about our roadmap, we are prioritizing security first.”

Prasad added that “customers were happy” with this update change “because they are worried about security too, and they're like, ‘hey, it's great to see that you're taking it seriously. You're doing it as rapidly as you can.’ So yeah, we have gotten tremendous support from the customers.”

Customers at the event did express support for the move, despite the release altering VMware’s previous realignment on its VCF update strategy. That alteration was announced last year and moved from having a “major” release every two years with “minor” updates every six months to a new model of releasing those major updates every three years with minor updates every nine months.

Shenoy during the latest presentation reiterated that the upcoming VCF update was scheduled for release “sometime” during the first quarter of its fiscal 2027.