“For APAC’s banking, government, and healthcare sectors navigating Sovereign AI mandates, VCF 9.1 is the definitive private cloud alternative for the AI era,” says Sylvain Cazard, President, Asia Pacific, Japan & Middle East, Broadcom.

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Sylvain Cazard, President, Asia Pacific, Japan & Middle East, Broadcom.

When Broadcom Inc. and Standard Chartered announced a long-term strategic commitment to accelerate the bank’s global infrastructure modernization, it not only represent a big win for the vendor but also a big nod to critics that have been unhappy by the vendor as it made changes to VMware products pricing and go to market strategies.

CRN Asia reached out to Broadcom execs in Asia to understand more about the impact of the Standard Chartered deal in the region.

According to Sylvain Cazard, President, Asia Pacific, Japan & Middle East, Broadcom, many leading banking, healthcare, and government organizations across the Asia-Pacific region have trusted VMware technology as the foundation for their mission-critical infrastructure.

“By embracing VCF, regional enterprises are taking their IT investments to the next level, ensuring essential infrastructure remains resilient, secure, and always available. As enterprises prepare for the agentic AI era, moving away from siloed infrastructure, towards a standardized private cloud is becoming a priority. VCF is the ideal solution for these increasing infrastructure demands, providing a future-proof single unified platform for innovation,” Cazard said.

According to Cazard, APAC enterprises now face a perfect storm from escalating public cloud costs, tightening data and AI sovereignty regulations, and surging server hardware costs driven by memory supply chain pressures.

“VCF 9.1 addresses all three, delivering up to 40% reduction in server costs through Enhanced NVMe Memory Tiering, making private cloud the economically compelling choice. For organizations running production AI, VCF 9.1 brings AI models directly to localized enterprise data, reducing the risk and cost of moving sensitive data to public infrastructure. For APAC’s banking, government, and healthcare sectors navigating Sovereign AI mandates, VCF 9.1 is the definitive private cloud alternative for the AI era,” he said.

Given this scenario, it would make sense for existing customers to continue with VMware. However, with reports showing more customers migrating away, the scenario is still one that Broadcom could provide any replies with when asked by CRN Asia.

In Asia Pacific, VMware customers continue to move away from the vendor due to its high renewal costs. Giant corporations in Japan like Toshiba as well as organizations in India and Southeast Asia continue to migrate their operations as they feel the increasing renewal costs was simply beyond their budget.

Partners in the region have also been affected since Broadcom made changes to its partner program. While VMware does still have a significant number of partners in the region, many have since pivoted to other vendors whom they believe offer greater flexibility for them. Several industry reports and partner announcements indicate that many are now building migration practices around Nutanix, HPE, OpenShift-based virtualization and other alternatives while still supporting existing VMware customers.

VCF and the Standard Chartered deal

Taking a deeper look at the Standard Chartered deal, Broadcom will be establishing a secure, resilient private cloud foundation to seamlessly support critical banking services across 54 global markets. This includes utilizing VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) to deliver a fully integrated software-defined private cloud environment to meet evolving global regulatory and security requirements.

VCF embeds intrinsic zero-trust security directly into the infrastructure layer, providing uninterrupted availability and compressing infrastructure deployment from weeks to a day. With 70% of its global infrastructure footprint already running on the new architecture, Standard Chartered has demonstrated that a consistent private cloud is successful at a global scale—laying the foundation for the next frontier in secure, resilient and compliant banking innovation.

According to John Sharratt, Global Head of Technology and Infrastructure, Standard Chartered, standardizing a fully virtualized software-defined infrastructure across the bank’s global operations enables Standard Chartered to meet the evolving demands of clients while strengthening technological core with the responsiveness, resilience and regulatory compliance that global banking demands.

“Our client-centric, long-term investments with global service providers, such as Broadcom, strengthen our ability to deliver always-on banking services in an ever changing and dynamic landscape, while accelerating innovation with a secure private cloud foundation,” he said.

Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager, VMware Cloud Foundation Division, Broadcom commented that global financial institutions require infrastructure that combines resilience, security and operational simplicity at scale.

“Standard Chartered is at the forefront of digital banking innovation, and we are proud to support their journey toward a highly automated, AI-driven, modern private cloud with VMware Cloud Foundation,” Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager, VMware Cloud Foundation Division, Broadcom said.

By modernizing the infrastructure that underpins its core banking, payments and digital services, Standard Chartered has enhanced its future-ready technology platform for sustainable growth and client-centric innovation—one that is anchored on a secure and resilient private cloud foundation.