Chopping Wood, Carrying Water: VMware by Broadcom's Open Source Story at KubeCon EU 2026

James Governor of RedMonk sits down with VMware by Broadcom's Dilpreet Bindra and Zach Shepherd at KubeCon Europe 2026 in Amsterdam to unpack what they call "the best kept secret in the industry": VMware by Broadcom's deep, sustained contributions to the CNCF and Kubernetes ecosystem. The conversation covers VMware's shift to exposing Cluster API directly as a product commitment, the etcd diagnostic tooling they've open-sourced for the whole community, and the journey of Velero from an internal project to a CNCF sandbox project with maintainers from Red Hat, Microsoft, and beyond. The trio also digs into the significance of CNCF's new AI platform conformance program, VKS's certification as a Kubernetes AI platform, and why workload portability matters more than ever as the AI tooling landscape explodes. Dilpreet and Zach close with what's got them buzzing at the biggest KubeCon Europe yet — from llm-d's CNCF sandbox acceptance to the quality of customer conversations happening on the show floor.

This RedMonk conversation is sponsored by VMware by Broadcom.

Show notes: https://redmonk.com/videos/vmware-by-broadcoms-open-source-story-at-kubecon-eu-2026/

Chapters:

00:00 Introductions: Meet Dilpreet Bindra and Zach Shepherd from VMware by Broadcom

01:07 The Best Kept Secret: VMware's History as a Top CNCF Contributor

01:50 Betting on Cluster API: Moving from Proprietary to Open Source

02:24 Chopping Wood, Carrying Water: Earning Community Trust

03:04 The Chop Wood Carry Water Award and VMware's Track Record

03:45 The etcd Story: Open-Sourcing Support Tools for the Whole Ecosystem

04:52 Leading Projects vs. Sharing Ownership

05:46 Velero's Evolution: From VMware Project to CNCF Sandbox

06:24 What Is Velero? Kubernetes-Native Backup and Restore

07:13 Diverse Maintainership: Red Hat, Microsoft, and Beyond

07:57 Why Contributing Velero to the CNCF Is a Strategic Investment, Not a Giveaway

08:34 AI, Kubernetes, and the Infrastructure Boom

09:06 VKS as a Certified Kubernetes AI Platform and Why Portability Matters

10:17 CNCF AI Compliance and the Promise of Workload Portability

10:46 KubeCon EU 2026: The Biggest One Yet

11:11 What's Most Exciting: llm-d Joins the CNCF Sandbox

11:34 Booth Energy and the Depth of Customer Conversations

12:07 Wrap-Up