Virtually Speaking Podcast

What happens when WebAssembly and Kubernetes come together? Recorded live at KubeCon 2026 in Amsterdam, Pete Flecha and Jad El-Zein sit down with Liam Randall, CEO of Cosmonic, to explore how WebAssembly is changing the way developers build, deploy, and operate cloud-native applications. Liam explains why WebAssembly is generating so much excitement beyond the browser, how it complements Kubernetes, and why organizations are looking at wasmCloud to simplify application portability across cloud, edge, and data center environments. Whether you’re a Kubernetes operator, platform engineer, or application developer, this conversation provides a practical look at where WebAssembly fits into the modern cloud-native stack.

At VMUG Connect 2026 in Minneapolis, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with security expert Bob Plankers to discuss how AI is changing cybersecurity—on both sides of the battle. The conversation explores how threat actors are increasingly using AI-powered techniques, from sophisticated social engineering attacks to campaigns like UNC5221 and “Brickstorm.” Bob explains why identity remains the primary attack surface, why many organizations still misunderstand Zero Trust, and how privileged accounts have become some of the most valuable targets in modern IT environments. The discussion also covers AI-generated voice and video impersonation, the importance of strong identity controls, conditional access, privileged access management, and why organizations need to think differently about trust in an era where convincing fakes can be generated in seconds. Finally, the team explores how AI can be used defensively, including emerging efforts by frontier model providers to identify vulnerabilities, improve software security, and help organizations stay ahead in the cybersecurity arms race.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 introduces some of the biggest changes to vSAN in years, and in this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, Pete and John sit down with Pete Koehler, Product Marketing Engineer for vSAN, to break it all down. The conversation dives into how vSAN is becoming simpler to operate, more efficient at scale, and better aligned with modern application and cyber recovery requirements. Pete explains the new Auto RAID capability, the redesigned effective capacity model, enhancements to global deduplication and compression, and how vSAN is reducing operational complexity through more automated, system-managed behavior. The team also explores native S3-compatible object storage for AI and modern applications, support for QLC drives in cyber recovery environments, improvements for migrations between OSA and ESA clusters, and expanded encryption support across storage clusters. Topics include: • Auto RAID and simplified storage policy management • Effective capacity and easier capacity planning • Global deduplication and new compression improvements • Zstandard (ZSTD) compression for structured data workloads • Native S3-compatible object storage in vSAN • QLC storage support for cyber recovery use cases • OSA to ESA migration flexibility • Remote datastore enhancements and encryption support • Cyber recovery and disaggregated storage clusters • vSAN security improvements in VCF 9.1 Links Mentioned More Capacity with VMware vSAN Compression and Global Deduplication in VCF 9.1 https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/07/vsan-compression-and-global-deduplication-in-vcf-9-1/ Cost-Efficient VMware vSAN ReadyNodes Certified for Cyber Recovery Deployments https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/07/vsan-readynodes-cyber-recovery/ Auto-RAID in VMware vSAN for VCF 9.1 - Comprehensive System-Managed Data Resilience https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/08/auto-raid-in-vsan-for-vcf-9-1/ Simplifying Storage with the New Effective Capacity View in VMware vSAN for VCF 9.1 https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/11/effective-capacity-view-in-vsan-for-vcf-9-1/ Greater Flexibility and Security with VMware vSAN Storage Clusters in VCF 9.1https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/12/vsan-storage-clusters-in-vcf-9-1/