Simon Sharwood 
Dell has decided that users of its older servers deserve the chance to run data processing units (DPUs, aka SmartNICs) – cards that combine networking hardware with enough compute and storage to run chores like encryption and free up CPU cores for more productive uses. The on-prem hardware holdout last week annnounced “Customer Kits” that … Read more
VMware last week held a staff meeting at which it reportedly foreshadowed job cuts – perhaps before its acquisition by Broadcom closes in late October. The Register has confirmed that the meeting took place last week and that it was a regular quarterly company update that featured a Q&A session with staff. Accounts of the … Read more
Cisco has discontinued its HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure products. The IT goliath told The Register today “evolving customer needs and market dynamics” made it rethink its plans for the equipment, which combined a hybrid cloud software stack and Cisco’s own Unified Computing System, or UCS, servers to offer a rival to the likes of VMware and … Read more
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan has dismissed concerns that China could derail the semiconductor giant’s acquisition of VMware. UK authorities recently approved the deal, and US authorities haven’t raised objections within a timeframe that would indicate Uncle Sam intends to halt the transaction ahead of its expected October 31 conclusion. Think it through, read it through … Read more
“You write what you need to win.” That’s what I was told during VMware’s Explore conference last week by a very senior Virtzilla executive who was directly involved in efforts to have UK regulators approve Broadcom’s acquisition of the virtualization giant. Among the tactics deployed to win approval was an extraordinary document that argued VMware … Read more
Explore Buyers have not rushed to adopt SmartNICs in their VMware environments, but the virtualization giant will soon support their use in more servers – a move it hopes will spur a new wave of adoption. SmartNICs – aka data processing units (DPUs) – are network cards that include some compute and storage capacity. Hyperscalers … Read more
Explore VMware intends to use the billion dollars a year Broadcom has promised to add to its R&D budget to simplify and extend its platform, to ease upgrades, and encourage users to adopt more of its stack. The Register learned of those plans today at VMware’s Explore conference in Las Vegas, where the virtualization outfit’s … Read more
Explore For years, VMware’s strategy has been to run any app in any environment. But even as hyperscalers bet on Arm-powered servers, and device makers wrestle Arm CPUs into myriad machines that run everywhere, the virtualization giant doesn’t see the need to bring its stack to the architecture. That’s despite VMware having revealed, back in … Read more
Explore VMware has kicked off its annual Explore conference with a series of announcements that advance its core strategy of using virtualized compute, storage, and networks to allow workloads to run with consistent security wherever their owners choose to have them execute. As such, this year’s conference represents steady advancement for VMware rather than the … Read more