Broadcom Customer Achievement Awards recognize and celebrate our customers’ successes leveraging innovative solutions to improve operations, future-proof infrastructure and drive business outcomes. This year, Broadcom has recognized the United States Senate Federal Credit Union (USSFCU) with the Innovator award. Innovators are visionary customers who embrace VMware solutions to maximize benefits across organizations. Read more about this innovator below.
In an era where digital transformation is paramount, financial institutions face the dual challenge of innovation and security. The USSFCU, a cornerstone of financial services for the U.S. Senate, Capitol Hill, and affiliated employee groups nationwide, has not only met this challenge but has excelled. By leveraging Broadcom’s VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA, USSFCU has established a modern private cloud environment that is both efficient and exceptionally secure, enabling them to deliver cutting-edge, AI-powered services to their members.
A Legacy of Member-Centric Innovation
Founded 90 years ago, USSFCU operates as a member-owned non-profit, committed to enhancing its members’ financial wellness. Beyond competitive loan rates, their commitment shines through an advanced online banking platform and mobile app, offering members seamless access to accounts, payment solutions, and other services with unparalleled levels of service, performance, and security.
This dedication to member satisfaction extends to their infrastructure. Mark Fournier, CIO/CTO of USSFCU, has been a driving force behind the credit union’s IT modernization for over a decade. He recognized the imperative for greater infrastructure scalability and security to keep pace with growing member demands. As Fournier aptly states, “On our decade-long journey to build out a secure private cloud, VMware (now Broadcom) has always been one step ahead of us with solutions offering superior agility, efficiency and protection.”
Building a Foundation for the Future: VMware Cloud Foundation
USSFCU’s strategic decision to deploy VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) laid the groundwork for their unified private cloud. This integrated platform seamlessly combines compute, networking, storage, management, and security, simplifying complex IT operations. Their participation in the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Beta Program further highlights their forward-thinking approach.
Fournier is particularly enthusiastic about Broadcom’s VCF 9.0, praising its streamlined implementation and centralized management. “Once you have everything plugged in, you can deploy an entire VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 environment in less than an hour, including your workload domains, virtual networking and security features,” he explains. This rapid deployment, coupled with integrated infrastructure observability from day one, represents a significant leap in operational efficiency. The consolidated operations visibility offered by VCF 9.0 is also a game-changer. “VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 provides a cohesive one-stop shop for managing our private cloud. Our admins don’t need to jump around to eight different places to track down issues and check routine performance metrics. It’s all right here,” says Fournier. This unified view dramatically simplifies troubleshooting and performance monitoring, allowing the IT team to focus on strategic initiatives rather than operational complexities.
Empowering Smarter Member Experiences with Private AI
With a robust VCF environment in place, USSFCU quickly implemented VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA. This critical step addressed the growing need for AI-powered services while prioritizing data security and privacy – a common concern with public cloud AI tools. Within days, the solution was deployed, enabling more than half of the credit union’s employees to regularly leverage AI, with 30% using it daily.
Fournier emphasizes the transformative impact of AI on member services: “Our members are our priority and AI is enabling us to provide personalized, real-time financial solutions. With VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA, we’ve built a secure, private cloud environment that allows us to quickly and efficiently implement AI technologies—whether it’s for knowledge-based chatbots assisting staff or delivering financial answers directly to our members across multiple devices. AI in banking helps us automate everyday transactions, streamline loan processing and proactively identify member needs, ensuring that our services are both intuitive and secure.” This commitment to secure, personalized AI highlights USSFCU’s dedication to modernizing their services while upholding the highest standards of data protection.
Uncompromising Performance and Security
USSFCU’s infrastructure advancements extend beyond the core private cloud. Their shift to VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture has yielded significant performance benefits. Optimized for high-performance NVMe-based TLC flash devices, this architecture eliminated the need for complex storage tier optimizations, offering standardization, reliability, and an incredible boost in performance with minimal cost differential. “vSAN Express Storage Architecture is really fast, period. It uses very performant drives,” Fournier asserts, highlighting the clear trade-off for enhanced capabilities.
Network traffic management and load balancing are handled by VMware Avi Load Balancer, which not only provides crucial visibility into traffic patterns across their virtual desktop environment but also bolsters security with VMware Avi web application firewall (WAF) against web attacks and traffic from their Microsoft Azure environment. “With VMware Avi Load Balancer, we can easily see all the components that play into traffic flows. It helps us quickly identify what might be causing latency or other things monitoring for and translate those into actionable items. Plus it scales out natively as our environment expands,” says Fournier.
Security remains a top priority, with VMware vDefend Advanced Threat Prevention and VMware vDefend Distributed Firewall reinforcing USSFCU’s Zero Trust strategies. These solutions provide hypervisor-integrated protection features, including advanced Intrusion Detection/Prevention System (IDS/IPS), malware prevention, and machine learning-enabled zero-day detection. Fournier describes the simplicity and effectiveness of vDefend: “vDefend enables our strategies that assume the bad guys are already inside and we just haven’t found them yet. It allows us to fill the gaps of where a threat could be hiding and do it in a way that doesn’t overload us with too many signals. That simplicity is crucial.”
To further enhance data utilization, USSFCU employs VMware Tanzu Greenplum, a massively parallel processing system built on Postgres. This unified data warehouse eliminates the need for custom connectors between disparate data sources, allowing for seamless integration of business intelligence (BI) and AI/ML capabilities. “VMware Tanzu Greenplum is incredibly fast. We can pull millions of rows of data in a fraction of a second. It’s flexible and non-disruptive,” Fournier notes, emphasizing the ability to manage it in their private environment without compromising security.
Looking Ahead: Continued Innovation and Member Service
The integrated VMware Cloud Foundation environment provides USSFCU with the agility to recover from issues, adapt to changing conditions, and swiftly deploy new services. As part of their strategic plan, the technology team continues to expand digital services and product offerings using AI. Future initiatives include improving the online loan application process, enhancing the membership application process for instant access, and exploring the use of an AI avatar for 24×7 member service.
USSFCU’s journey with Broadcom’s VMware solutions exemplifies how a focus on secure, scalable, and innovative infrastructure can empower financial institutions to deliver superior member experiences. By embracing private cloud and private AI, USSFCU is not just keeping pace with the digital age; they are leading the way in enhancing financial wellness for their members.