Broadcom Hands VM API to CNCF, Aiming at KubeVirt Turf

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation accepted Broadcom's VM API as a Sandbox project this week, handing enterprises a single API for managing virtual machines and containers on Kubernetes. The move puts Broadcom's contribution in direct competition with KubeVirt, the open source project underpinning Red Hat's OpenShift Virtualization, which has spent two years winning over VMware customers alienated by Broadcom's pricing and licensing changes.

VM API supports Kubernetes through pluggable providers for different hypervisors, so VMs, containers and bare metal workloads can share one control plane. The contribution could ease vendor lock-in concerns while letting customers run a common control plane across Kubernetes environments. It could also steer those same customers toward VMware Cloud Foundation rather than KubeVirt or other open platforms — an olive branch, but one rooted firmly in Broadcom soil.

What does this change for virtualization buyers?

"Open source is good for everyone, even competitors," said Torsten Volk, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget. "Organizations' fears of vendor lock-in and previous licensing cost concerns over VMware offerings during the immediate post-Broadcom acquisition days have not fallen on deaf ears. Broadcom's open source support and contributions can be seen as offering an olive branch to the entire community."

The practical question is whether rivals invest. KubeVirt places VMs alongside containers within a single API but leans on native Kubernetes functionality for orchestrating VM storage, networking and other advanced infrastructure features. With VM API, user organizations could gain more options for running VMs alongside containers at scale — if vendors such as SUSE, Rancher or Red Hat opt to back the project. Without them, Broadcom owns the table it just set.

Broadcom also changed its tune on low-end customers this past week, launching an entry-level vSphere Express product for deployments with fewer than 128 CPU cores. That reverses, or at least softens, the post-acquisition strategy of pushing small shops out the door.

VM API and Velero: a two-piece portability story

The portability plot thickens with another Broadcom open source move. VM API handles the infrastructure definition contract for VMs, while Velero — contributed to CNCF sandbox in March — handles data protection, backup and state migration. If customers spin up portable VM workloads across different hypervisors, Velero becomes the crucial bridge for moving persistent data and cluster state between those environments, according to one Broadcom official.

"Together, the two pieces give enterprises a predictable, standardized path to modernize private cloud infrastructure without giving up reliability or data sovereignty," said Dilpreet Bindra, senior director of engineering in Broadcom's VCF Division. "The API's openness will let customers start standardizing their workload definitions and operational workflows on their own, serving as a natural on-ramp before they commit to full VCF deployment."

That last clause is the whole strategy in miniature. Standardize on the open API first; land on VCF later.

An open source platform takes shape

Broadcom's open source portfolio now runs wider than virtualization. The company introduced TrueSource by Broadcom for Spring Enterprise vulnerability management earlier this year, then broadened TrueSource in August with support for Node.js, Java libraries, Bitnami container images, and specific data engines including PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, MySQL and Valkey. The program patches upstream application components to help teams cope with a flood of AI-driven vulnerabilities.

Spring itself remains a major open source application framework with Broadcom as primary corporate steward and committer. Its enterprise Java support now extends directly to AI workload development. Recent Spring releases have focused on supporting AI-driven applications, including compatibility across the entire Spring ecosystem, said Sergi Almar i Graupera, Spring engineer and organizer of the Spring I/O and Wasm I/O conferences.

"This is all necessary integration for modern platform engineering," Graupera said.

Beyond Spring and Velero, Broadcom supports Backstage's internal developer portal, Crossplane for infrastructure provisioning, and Argo CD for GitOps. Harbor, Antrea and Contour form part of the wider CNCF landscape platform teams can draw on for container registry, networking, ingress and backup/restore. Foundational work in CNCF's Kubernetes Cluster API and etcd projects further supports multi-cloud cluster lifecycle management. Together these components offer modular building blocks for governed, AI-ready platforms across VMware Cloud Foundation, the Tanzu platform and the rest of Broadcom's portfolio.

Red Hat, for its part, is not standing still. It builds VM management features directly into OpenShift and stood up its own open source vulnerability management clearinghouse, Lightwell, this year. The VM-orchestration contest now runs on two fronts: the CNCF sandbox and the enterprise budget.

Disclosure: the original author's company uses VMware's free Hands-On Labs sandbox and is considering purchasing vSphere Express.