Hello Virtualization Lovers!

I just got back from virtually attending Google Cloud Next ‘25, and wow, the focus has shifted heavily toward AI Agent Engines and optimized infrastructure. But what does this mean for us, the VMware administrators running workloads on Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE)?

A lot of the buzz was around the new Agent Engine in Vertex AI and AlphaFold 3 support, but hidden beneath the AI hype are some serious infrastructure improvements that benefit GCVE.

Infrastructure for AI

Google is pushing hard on “Infrastructure for AI,” and GCVE is part of that story. The ability to run your traditional VM workloads next to high-performance TPU and GPU clusters is a game-changer. You can keep your database in vSphere and have it accessed by an AI agent running in GKE or Cloud Run with minimal latency via the VPC peering.

VCF License Portability

The biggest news dropped just around the conference: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) license portability. This is huge. It means if you have already invested in VCF licenses on-prem (thanks, Broadcom), you can bring them to Google Cloud. This effectively lowers the TCO of the solution since you are paying Google only for the metal and management, not the software.

Summary

Next ‘25 wasn’t just about chatbots. It solidified GCVE as a bridge between the legacy enterprise world and the new AI-driven future. If you haven’t looked at how your vCenter can talk to Vertex AI yet, 2025 is the year to start.