Mobile World Congress 24 (#MWC24), taking place this week in Barcelona, features VMware, recently acquired by Broadcom, as an event sponsor. Members of our Software-Defined Edge (SDE) team are among the company executives attending the show and are excited to reconnect, in person, with many of our partners and customers. As the edge increasingly takes a starring role in digital transformation, we are making significant investments in our partners and SDE solutions to help our joint customers meet – and exceed – their business goals.
A More Streamlined, Go-to-Market Strategy for the Software-Defined Edge
According to Forrester Research, edge computing is “becoming one of the most important emerging technologies in enterprises.” Last year our partners, including resellers and telecom carriers, were key to our growth and success. As part of our SDE business, we are focused on the edge in its myriad of definitions: the edge in the context of compute; the edge in the context of AI networks, and the edge in the context of the carrier. Over the last few years, we have focused on building and delivering innovative solutions that address all the needs of the edge. So, what’s new?
Simply, the answer is focus. Prior to the acquisition, we had three distinct product portfolios:
Each of these portfolios had separate go-to-market strategies. Our Vice President and General Manager Sanjay Uppal, Software Defined Edge Division at Broadcom, took a close look at each of the portfolios’ business functions, and decided we would focus our go-to-market strategy on the opportunities where the three sets of offerings intersect. As a result, we have moved from being three distinct product groups within a business unit to a unified product group and business unit to serve a single, specific market – the Software-Defined Edge – with a streamlined go-to-market strategy. While our SDE portfolio still includes SD-WAN & SASE (now branded as VeloCloud), Edge Compute Stack, and Telco Cloud Platform, you’ll be seeing a lot more cross-product integration and offerings that will deliver solutions to address IT-OT convergence in the enterprise and the increasing role of edge compute in carrier offerings.
Distributed Digital Infrastructure
The software-defined edge is distributed digital infrastructure for running workloads across dispersed locations, placed close to where endpoints are producing or consuming data. Think hospitals, retail stores, cell towers, even first-responder vehicles. SDE extends to where the users and devices are—whether they are in the office, on the road or on the factory floor.
Workloads are rapidly growing at the edge. When workloads migrate to the edge, enterprises need digital infrastructure to support those workloads. For example, a popular use case for our SDE solutions is video inference. Let’s say there is a video camera monitoring inventory on the grocery shelves and, when it notices that an item is low in number, it notifies somebody to restock that shelf. In that scenario, there is no user – it’s just a workload operating by itself, but it serves a critical business function. To achieve that, the camera system needs two things: compute and connectivity. First the edge compute node performs real-time processing to turn the video stream into actionable data. Then the camera system needs to be able to reliably inform other services, like the inventory system or another device such as a store employee’s handheld computer, that something has happened (i.e., an item is running low). So, it needs reliable connectivity, which is why strong carrier service provider partners are critical to helping implement and configure our solutions in a way that is transparent for our customers.
Empowering Partners and Customers to Drive Revenue
Software-defined edge customers are not always Global 2000 corporations. Many times they’re smaller organizations – companies that may have two or three locations and don’t have a large IT staff, but still have critical data needs and interesting growth paths from a technology perspective. For example, many small “mom and pop” stores want to drive efficiencies within their business to meet their customers where they want to be both in an online and local presence. Their primary focus is on growing the business – not installing or maintaining the technology. As a result, they rely on our partners to deliver and implement the solutions that are best for their business.
With the rise of both the edge and SDE customers, we want to reaffirm our commitment to helping our partners –and customers – drive revenue for their business. One very important note we want our Service Providers (SP) and Managed Service Providers (MSP) partners to know: SPs and MSPs who are operating under VeloCloud contracts continue to be governed by those contracts per their terms and conditions. It is our intent to continue those partnerships.
At Broadcom, we know our partners are critical to the success of all our customers, large and small, and are our primary route to market for Software-defined edge solutions. We hope to meet many of our partners and customers at MWC this week and at future events this year.