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 9.0 delivers a complete private cloud platform for today’s workloads. He explains why “modern apps” shouldn’t be limited to just Kubernetes or containers, but should include any application that drives business value—including VMs.

The conversation covers:

VMware’s journey in the Kubernetes space since 2015, strengthened by the Heptio acquisition in 2018

The rise of hybrid runtimes, where VMs and containers coexist seamlessly

How Tanzu Mission Control integrates into VCF automation for multi-cluster management

The role of infrastructure services in delivering application resilience

Advice for IT leaders on approaching app modernization, including treating Kubernetes as part of the infrastructure stack

If you’re navigating your organization’s modernization journey, this episode offers practical insights on how VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 supports both traditional and modern workloads—helping IT teams build a future-ready private cloud.