VMware Propels App Modernization for Customers on Any Cloud

As organizations come to grips with the reality of a permanent digital-first world, the pressure to digitize and modernize operations remains high. While this modernization is imperative, it’s equally difficult; true digitization and transformation efforts are complex, extensive, and must happen without compromising a company’s ability to support ongoing business needs. Teams are challenged to build applications that are more reliable, secure, intelligent, and adaptive and must deliver them faster, at scale, and across any cloud. Today at VMworld 2021, VMware is introducing advances to its VMware Tanzu portfolio to enable management and operation of applications at scale and provide developers with the autonomy to build and deploy apps on any cloud.

“The changes brought on by accelerated digital transformation initiatives mean software development teams are challenged to build apps that are more reliable, secure, intelligent, and adaptive. They must deliver them faster, at scale, and across any cloud. That’s a daunting prospect no matter where an organization is in its modernization journey,” said Ajay Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Modern Apps & Management Business Group, VMware. “With the breadth and depth of the Tanzu portfolio, VMware is uniquely positioned to meet our customers where they are now, providing the tools, training, enablement and services that will help them progress along their entire app modernization journey, across infrastructure, applications, and any cloud.” 

VMware Tanzu Application Platform Adds Capabilities to Beta Release

Introduced in its first beta at VMware SpringOne 2021, Tanzu Application Platform delivers a superior developer experience for enterprises building and deploying apps and APIs on any Kubernetes. It gets software teams to production faster and sustains them over time by automating source to production pipelines and coordinating the efforts of development and operations teams.

At VMworld, VMware is announcing new capabilities to the Tanzu Application Platform Beta that will deliver the full end-to-end developer and operator experience including:

• Supply chain choreography: based on the open source cartographer project, allowing app operators to create pre-approved paths to production for developers that integrate Kubernetes resources and existing toolchains
• Developer tooling including IDE plugins: giving developers the opportunity to interact with the platform or its open source components easily and efficiently to execute important and frequent pre-commit development tasks
• Intrinsic security: adding features for signing, scanning, and storing images along the path to production
• Service bindings: Operators can specify how endpoints and credentials from data services are exposed to workloads in a portable and Kubernetes-native way
• Source controller: Enables app developers to create or update workloads from local source code
• Convention Service: a framework for platform operators to configure policies of deployed workloads to enable that all workloads to follow the best practices.

Introducing Freely Available Software to Experience VMware Tanzu

VMware Tanzu Community Edition is a freely available, easy to manage Kubernetes platform for learners and users. Community-supported, the open source software distribution can be installed and configured in minutes on a local workstation or cloud of choice, and automates end-to-end application delivery with a complete platform for application developers, IT Operators, and DevOps engineers.

VMware Tanzu Community Edition will enable learners and users to:

• Explore Tanzu independently with freely available software and services.Users can download no-cost, open source software that is unencumbered by usage restrictions or functional limitations; enhance learning with free access to top-notch education and training resources, and get extra help with community support that’s backed by committed and knowledgeable experts.
• Take on new challenges confidently with the same software used in Tanzu commercial editions.Proven, enterprise-class software enables end-to-end application delivery automation today, while making sure that skills, knowledge, and artifacts are fully transferable for use with Tanzu commercial editions.
• Get up and running in minutes on a local workstation or in a preferred cloud environment. Users can quickly build a complete Kubernetes-based platform customized to their needs, and run it on a local workstation, in vSphere, or in a public cloud with compact, single node and multi-cluster configurations.

Additionally, VMware is announcing a free-tier of VMware Tanzu Mission Control — Tanzu Mission Control Starter is a multi-cloud, multi-cluster Kubernetes management solution available as a SaaS service. Users can leverage Tanzu Mission Control Starter to get global visibility and policy control over Kubernetes clusters – whether on-premises or in any public clouds. Users can combine Tanzu Mission Control Starter with Tanzu Community Edition to get started on running and managing Kubernetes-based containerized apps at no cost. And for those not currently using Tanzu but running Kubernetes with other providers (such as AKS, GKE, EKS), those existing clusters can be attached to Tanzu Mission Control Starter to centrally manage them. 

How Customers are Benefitting from VMware Tanzu

Drax Group is a renewable energy company engaged in renewable power generation. “We looked at many solutions in the industry for our IT modernization requirements and very quickly decided on VMware Tanzu,” said Mark Leonard, director of IT, Drax Group. “VMware Tanzu provided us a substantial benefit as it’s ready to go, easy to use, sets our developers free and removes the complexities of using public cloud tools where DevOps can sometimes become a burden. We launched an industry-leading digital service for our customers, managing their fleets of electric vehicles, and it runs on VMware Tanzu. This allows us to deliver small reusable blocks of capabilities that can be easily refreshed and built out to deliver scalable future-proof applications.” 

AI Development Simplified Through VMware vSphere with Tanzu and NVIDIA AI Enterprise

In March 2021, VMware and NVIDIA announced an end-to-end AI-ready enterprise platform that’s easy to deploy and operate. This joint platform includes the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite which has been certified, optimized, and supported by NVIDIA for VMware vSphere. VMware is announcing that Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service, included in VMware vSphere with Tanzu, is now integrated with NVIDIA AI Enterprise, enabling customers to automate the delivery of containerized workloads, and proactively manage apps in production.

Customers can now trial their AI projects on NVIDIA AI Enterprise with vSphere with Tanzu, which lets IT operations teams use their existing vSphere environment to deliver Kubernetes clusters to AI developer teams at a rapid pace, while still enabling enterprise-class governance, reliability, and security. This allows enterprises to avoid AI silos and simplify management by leveraging virtualization to fold AI developments into existing enterprise infrastructure, accelerating AI adoption in the enterprise. 

VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Now Supports NVIDIA GPUs in Amazon Web Services and Azure
As part of VMware’s dedication to providing an enterprise-class, multi-cloud Kubernetes distribution, VMware is delivering one of the most requested VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid features of all-time – NVIDIA GPU support for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, supported in VMware vSphere, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Azure environments.

VMware provides a consistent performant modern apps platform that can run everywhere. With Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.4, VMware is announcing NVIDIA GPU support for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid on AWS and Azure environments.² Cluster API, the upstream technology used for cluster lifecycle management, supports GPU instance types for AWS and Azure. Developers can now create and manage the lifecycle of GPU-enabled clusters in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid for AWS and Azure. 

Enabling Partners’ Developer-Ready Clouds Powered by VMware Tanzu

VMware is now bringing more self-service and DevSecOps capabilities, including VMware Tanzu, to cloud provider partners. With VMware, partners can offer customers fully managed developer-ready clouds on-prem, as hosted private clouds, or in VMware Cloud on AWS. The availability of VMware Tanzu across all these environments enables partners’ customers to quickly build and test cloud-native apps leveraging a managed Kubernetes service. With VMware App Launchpad delivered through VMware Cloud Director, for example, customers can access the building blocks they need to develop their modern cloud-native apps and use this same platform to then deploy their custom apps to production.

“There is high demand for container technology to support the needs of developers that can be delivered from a highly secured environment and that meets requirements in data sovereignty and privacy,” said Pasi Sutinen, head of hybrid cloud at TietoEVRY. “Tanzu Kubernetes Grid running on VMware Cloud infrastructure, with VMware Cloud Director on top to manage multi-tenancy, enables providers such as TietoEVRY to offer customers unified management of workloads running on both VMs and containers. This combination enables partners to deliver different levels of security and isolation specific to each customer’s environment.”