At Hackathon Explore 2025, creativity and collaboration took center stage.
This year’s Hackathon showcased what happens when brilliant minds rally around automation: practical tools, bold ideas, and a community-driven approach to problem-solving.
It also underscored VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) as the backbone of the modern private cloud. As discussed at Explore this year, VCF 9.0 is driving cost-efficient operations and optimized scalability—and adoption is surging.
After weeks of remote teamwork, IT pros and developers came together to demo live automation projects—presenting prototypes, solving real-world challenges, and building connections that power the VCF community.
Advancing Innovative Ideas
Teams tackled projects ranging from data center scripts to graphical user interface (GUI) enhancements—each designed to simplify operations and drive automation at scale.
Highlights included:
Team 4—led by Dale Hassinger, VCF Solution Architect at Broadcom—built an AI interface for VMware products that include vCenter and VMware Cloud Foundation. Using Model Context Protocol (MCP) with PowerShell and PowerCLI, the solution analyzes RVTools data to automate everyday tasks like generating reports, emails, and CSV files.
The goal: Free up time for IT teams managing complex environments and urgent tasks.
“The best outcome is if people find it interesting and build it into something,” said Hassinger, referring to the interface his team developed for automating tasks.
Team 8—led by Pawel Piotrowski, VMware Solutions Architect—focuses on policy-driven RBAC compliance for vCenter. Their tool, vAuditRBAC, automatically compares live roles and permissions with central policies stored in GitHub or Confluence, flagging misconfigurations to streamline operations and reduce risk.
The goal: Make operations run smoother for VM users running multiple disparate products.
“You don’t need to be a developer to take part in the Hackathon,” said Piotrowski, underscoring the event’s inclusive nature.
Demos and Recognition
By 10 p.m., the teams went head-to-head in front of the judges. Each had a short amount of time to showcase their work—from a Raspberry Pi 5 monitoring app to enhanced vChecker plugins, from AI-driven task automation to RBAC compliance checks.
Judges scored projects on creativity, implementation, real-world relevance, and clarity.
The judges finally announced the winners at 11:30 p.m. that night:
- 1st place: Team Hassinger (MCP AI interface)
- 2nd place: Team Dorflinger (vCheck Fork)
- 3rd place: Team Piotrowski (RBAC Compliance)
Hackathon Highlights
This year’s event showcases how the VMware community thrives when creativity meets real-world challenges. Teams delivered practical automation tools, fresh ideas for scaling infrastructure, and solutions that simplify day-to-day IT operations.
The Power of the Community
The message is clear: VCF isn’t just a platform—it’s the bedrock of modern infrastructure, applications, and security. And our Hackathon further proves the community leads the way in shaping what’s to come.
Go here to see more from Explore 2025.