This episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast features hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson joined by returning guest Pete Koehler for a deep dive into vSAN and the evolving conversation around application versus infrastructure high availability. Pete Koehler highlights recent updates to vSAN Ready Nodes that significantly reduce hardware requirem…

The Virtually Speaking Podcast heads to VMware Explore 2025, where Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Dale Hassinger, winner of this year’s VMware Explore Hackathon. Dale shares the story behind his team’s winning project: a Model Contextual Protocol (MCP) server built in PowerShell that connects to VMware products and leverages AI tools …

At VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and Dave Linthicum sat down with Paul Lembo, CTO for Strategic Americas at Broadcom, to capture the energy and insights from the event. Paul reflects on conversations with customers, partners, and integrators, highlighting how VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is building trust by delivering on promises made th…

At VMware Explore 2025, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Chandra Prathuri, Product Management, VMware Cloud Foundation Division at Broadcom, to dive into the automation capabilities of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 The conversation kicks off with an analogy of turtles and tunnels, pointing out how slow and fragmented traditional IT operat…

At VMware Explore 2025 (Day Three), hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Raj Bhat from AMD and Dave Morera from Broadcom to discuss a major announcement: VMware’s support for AMD Instinct MI350 GPUs for Private AI workloads. Raj dives into the specs of the MI350—288GB of memory and nearly 20 petaflops of performance, packaged in a UBB…

The Virtually Speaking Podcast is back from VMware Explore 2025 with an inspiring conversation featuring Nick Kuhn. Hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson dive into Nick’s incredible home lab journey—from starting with a single HPZ 440 workstation to building a massive 16-host environment capable of running large language models. Nick shares how his …

On day three of VMware Explore 2025, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Drew Nielsen to explore the economic value of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). Drew explains how customer sentiment has shifted since last year—organizations have moved past the “five stages of grief” around perpetual licensing and are now fully embracing VCF. He highli…

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Nick Kuhn from VMware Tanzu during VMware Explore 2025. Nick—who also hosts Cloud Foundry Weekly—breaks down what Tanzu is today following VMware’s recent organizational changes under Broadcom. He explains how Kubernetes components (now called VMwa…

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Jad El-Zein, technologist at Broadcom, live from VMware Explore 2025. Jad, who recently returned to the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) team after his time with the Tanzu Business Unit, shares his perspective on application modernization and how VCF …

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast from VMware Explore 2025, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with vSAN expert Pete Koehler to dig into the latest advancements in vSAN technology. The conversation explores how vSAN design and operations have evolved, with networking now taking center stage over disk configurations as the platf…

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson talk with Drew Nielsen from Broadcom about the major changes to VMware’s certification program following the Broadcom acquisition. Drew breaks down how VMware has streamlined certifications from five tracks into three clear, role-specific paths for: 🔹 Implemente…

In this VMware Explore 2025 edition of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson talk with Raj Reddi from the United States Senate Federal Credit Union (USSFCU) and Alexis Colon, Sr. Solutions Architect at Broadcom. Raj shares how USSFCU—serving a sensitive membership that includes Senate and Supreme Court communities—suc…

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, recorded at VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Vijay Ramachandran, VP of Products for Core Infrastructure at Broadcom. Vijay shares the latest innovations in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) that are reshaping core infrastructure: 🔹 Memory Tiering – a technical fea…

At VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Himanshu Singh to unpack one of the biggest announcements: Private AI is now natively built into VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF 9.0). With this shift, customers no longer need an add-on service—all Private AI capabilities are included as part of VCF entitlement, making AI more…

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, recorded at VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Michael Miller, IT Systems Architect at Mary Washington Healthcare. Mike shares his inspiring career journey from working the midnight help desk shift to leading IT architecture at a healthcare organization where up…

At VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Himanshu Singh to discuss the expanded partnership between VMware and Canonical—bringing together the world’s #1 private cloud and the #1 cloud OS. Himanshu explains how Ubuntu OS with Canonical’s 10-year enterprise support is now bundled as part of VMware Cloud Foundation (…

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast recorded at VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Jon Rosenson, President & COO at Expedient, to explore how Expedient is delivering VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) as a Service. Expedient, a full-stack cloud services provider with over 25 years of experience and a VM…

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast from VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Dilpreet Bindra, Sr. Director of Engineering at VMware by Broadcom, to talk about the evolution of Kubernetes and VMware’s latest innovations. Dilpreet explains how Kubernetes has moved from niche adoption to the mainstream…

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast recorded at VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and Dave Linthicum sit down with Johan van Amersfoort from ITQ to discuss ITQ’s long-standing partnership with VMware by Broadcom and their latest innovation for AI. Johan introduces ITQ’s new GPU Sizer tool for VMware Private AI Foundation, designe…

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast from VMware Explore 2025, host Pete Flecha is joined by Anupama Mahabhashyam and Odded Solomon to discuss the latest innovations transforming the telecommunications industry. The conversation covers: 📡 The shift from physical network functions to cloud-native, containerized applications ⚙️ The launc…

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Glenn Sizemore from NetApp live at VMware Explore 2025 to discuss NetApp Disaster Recovery, a SaaS service within the BlueXP portfolio designed specifically for VMware workloads. Glenn explains how the service delivers disaster recovery that feels …

At VMware Explore 2025, host Pete Flecha speaks with Prashanth Shenoy, VP of Product Marketing at Broadcom, about the strategic partnerships shaping the future of VMware Cloud Foundation. The conversation dives into key announcements, including: 🤝 Canonical + VMware – Ubuntu OS integration with full enterprise support for VCF customers ⚡ NVIDIA + V…

At VMware Explore 2025, host Pete Flecha sits down with Dave Linthicum, Rick Walsworth, and James Schorr, Sr. Director of Enterprise Cloud Platforms at GCI—Alaska’s largest telecom provider—to discuss GCI’s journey from vSphere to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0. James shares how GCI moved from managing disparate vSphere clusters with complex pat…

In this VMware Explore 2025 episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Krish Prasad, SVP and General Manager of the VMware Cloud Foundation division at Broadcom. Krish shares how VMware, now under Broadcom, has delivered on its long-standing vision of a truly integrated private cloud platform with …

At VMware Explore 2025, the Virtually Speaking Podcast sat down with Chris Wolf, Global Head of AI and Advanced Services at Broadcom, alongside hosts Pete Flecha and guest co-host David Linthicum, to unpack VMware’s latest Private AI announcements. Chris details the expanded partnership with NVIDIA, including support for B200s, RTX Pro 6000s, Direc…