Kyndryl and Broadcom expanded their VMware Cloud Foundation alliance last month as enterprises seek more control over where their data, technology and operations reside.
The augmented deal comes as AI increases the speed and potential impact of security threats while sovereignty demands complicate decisions about where workloads should run.
To manage those challenges, Kyndryl now brings consulting, managed services and agentic AI capabilities to VCF environments. The consultancy aims to deliver “cloud-like speed, cloud-like automation, cloud-like developer experience to a private and hybrid cloud environment,” Giovanni Carraro, Kyndryl’s global strategic alliances leader, told Channel Dive.
Both Kyndryl and Broadcom said they intend to give customers this level of automation and developer experience while also ensuring that users have greater control over critical infrastructure.
The move comes as enterprises demand more oversight and control of their cloud environments and operations than before. Compare that to about two years ago when sovereignty discussions centered primarily on data residency, driven in part by regulations such as GDPR, Carraro said. Now customers are also weighing technological sovereignty — how dependent they are on particular technologies — and operational sovereignty, which includes the ability to keep critical systems running under adverse conditions.
“The sovereignty rules are reshaping ... the markets, and clients are starting to consider sovereignty ... as another element that they have to manage,” Carraro said.
Drivers vary by customer and region. Carraro cited regulatory requirements, operational resilience and dependence on foreign technology as key considerations. At the same time, Kyndryl said in its announcement that AI is increasing security and governance pressure as autonomous systems identify and exploit vulnerabilities at machine speed.
Together, those concerns are prompting enterprises to rethink which workloads belong in public clouds and which should remain in, or return to, private and on-premises environments.
“What we're seeing is that clients are starting to look at trade-offs and try to find ... the right balance,” Carraro said.
Carraro characterized that as a sign of maturation in the public-versus-private cloud debate after years in which enterprises often treated public cloud as the default destination.
“[W]e're coming to that maturity ... in realizing that the public cloud is great at certain things, but it's not perfect, and so there are certain things that are probably best suited to be on premises or in a private cloud,” Carraro said.
Kyndryl widens VMware efforts
Against that backdrop, Kyndryl will provide VCF and VMware Tanzu services spanning advisory and strategy, architecture and design, upgrades and modernization, and Day-2 operations. That all covers virtualized and containerized workloads, with integration into public cloud landing zones as workload requirements change.
The alliance also pushes Kyndryl's Agentic AI Framework into VCF environments. Using rules encoded into software, Kyndryl will restrict AI agents to approved actions based on customers’ business and regulatory requirements. The company said users can retain flexibility across models, data and infrastructure without letting agents operate outside those rules.
Kyndryl further plans to strengthen security in the underlying VCF infrastructure. For example, the company said it will build security policies into private-cloud environments before deploying workloads. The idea is to reduce exposure to vulnerabilities that AI agents used by attackers can discover and exploit at machine speed. In addition, the consultancy's cyber recovery capabilities for VCF include separate recovery environments, snapshots that cannot be altered and coordinated recovery procedures.
Supporting these projects will require more VCF expertise. As such, Kyndryl and Broadcom are jointly investing in skills development for “several thousand” Kyndryl consultants, architects and delivery specialists, according to Kyndryl's Aug. 27 announcement.
Kyndryl did not provide a more specific headcount when asked how many employees that represents or how many are certified today. Carraro also did not give a timetable for when the additional consultants and architects receiving VCF training and certifications will enter customer engagements. Kyndryl already has VCF modernization work underway and will continue building the skills and certifications of its consultants, architects and delivery specialists, Carraro said.
Broadcom, for its part, tied that talent investment directly to its VCF plans.
“Our expanded relationship with Kyndryl helps ensure that our mutual customers have the expert guidance required to fully leverage VMware Cloud Foundation as a strategic private cloud platform,” said Regan McGrath, president, Americas, Broadcom. “Kyndryl’s global delivery capabilities and investment in certified talent provide enterprises with the foundation they need to drive agility, modernize applications and scale AI-driven innovation.”
One wrinkle in the sovereignty pitch: a good share of the technological dependence enterprises say they are now managing runs straight through Broadcom. The company retired VMware's perpetual licenses, bundled thousands of SKUs into subscriptions, raised the minimum subscription from 16 cores to 72 and rebuilt the partner program around VCF certifications. Customers counting their single-vendor exposure often describe the vendor as selling the remedy.
