USSFCU has spent the past decade reshaping its IT environment around a secure private cloud, with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) at the core. The goal was to gain scalability, stronger security, and simpler operations to support members across the U.S. Senate, Capitol Hill, and more than 100 Select Employee Groups.

Key outcomes from adopting VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 include:

• Fast deployment: Once the infrastructure is connected, the team can deploy an entire VCF 9.0 environment—including workload domains, virtual networking, and security features—in less than an hour.
• Centralized operations: VCF 9.0 provides a single, consolidated console for managing the private cloud. Administrators no longer need to “jump around to eight different places” to troubleshoot or check performance; observability is integrated from day one.
• Integrated security and networking: Compute, networking, storage, management, and security are unified on one platform, which helps USSFCU respond quickly to issues, adapt to changing conditions, and roll out new services.

Overall, VMware Cloud Foundation gives USSFCU a cohesive private cloud platform that supports its member-first strategy while simplifying how the technology team runs and secures the environment.

USSFCU has implemented VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA on top of its VMware Cloud Foundation environment to reimagine how it delivers financial services, without moving sensitive data into public AI tools or public clouds.

The credit union’s approach focuses on:

• Private, secure AI: AI runs inside USSFCU’s own private cloud, which helps eliminate many of the privacy concerns associated with external AI services and keeps member financial data within the existing security envelope.
• Broad internal adoption: Today, more than half of USSFCU’s employees regularly use the AI solution, with up to 30 staff members using it daily to assist with their work.
• Smarter member experiences: AI is being used to power knowledge-based chatbots that assist staff, automate everyday transactions, streamline loan processing, and proactively identify member needs. The aim is to move toward personalized, real-time financial solutions across multiple devices.

Looking ahead, USSFCU is exploring additional AI-driven services, such as improving online loan and membership applications for faster access and testing an AI avatar to provide enhanced 24x7 member support—all while keeping data inside a secure, private cloud environment.

USSFCU has complemented VMware Cloud Foundation and Private AI with a set of VMware technologies that focus on performance, data intelligence, and Zero Trust security.

High-performance storage with vSAN Express Storage Architecture

• USSFCU upgraded to VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture, optimized for NVMe-based TLC flash devices.
• This removed the need for manual tiering and complex caching configurations, while delivering a standardized drive configuration and a significant performance boost.
• The team found the slight cost increase to be a worthwhile trade-off for the reliability and speed gains.

Traffic visibility and protection with VMware Avi Load Balancer

• VMware Avi Load Balancer manages network traffic and load balancing, especially across the virtual desktop environment.
• It provides clear visibility into traffic flows, helping the team quickly pinpoint causes of latency and translate findings into actionable improvements.
• With Avi Web Application Firewall (WAF), USSFCU adds another layer of protection against web attacks, including traffic coming from a Microsoft Azure environment.

Data warehousing and analytics with VMware Tanzu Data Intelligence

• USSFCU uses VMware Tanzu Greenplum (part of VMware Tanzu Data Intelligence) as a centralized data warehouse to unify disparate internal data.
• As an MPP system built on Postgres, it supports both BI and AI/ML workloads, enabling faster, more personalized services.
• The team can pull millions of rows of data in a fraction of a second, without building custom connectors for each new business request, and they can run it entirely within their private environment.

Zero Trust security with VMware vDefend

• VMware vDefend provides a distributed firewall and advanced threat prevention, supporting USSFCU’s Zero Trust mindset—assuming threats may already be inside the network.
• Capabilities include an advanced IDS/IPS, malware prevention, and machine learning-based zero-day detection.
• The team values that vDefend helps “fill the gaps” where threats could hide, without overwhelming them with excessive alerts.

Together, these tools help USSFCU maintain a high-performance, data-driven, and secure private cloud that can adapt quickly to new member services and AI initiatives.