New features show VMware Tanzu's impact on dev community
Despite questions of a sale, VMware Tanzu remains a strong influence in the developer community, especially with added features announced at VMware Explore 2023.
One of the most common questions heard at VMware Explore 2023 was "When will VMware announce the sale of Tanzu as a consequence of the recent Broadcom acquisition?" This dialogue sparked discussions within the tech community about Tanzu's future in the modern application development and management world of Tanzu's cutting-edge solutions for modern application development and management post-acquisition.
But I would disagree that this sale would be the motion. Broadcom invested $2 billion in VMware after its acquisition, with $1 billion headed to research and development.
According to the "2023 Distributed Cloud Series: The Mainstreaming of Cloud-native Apps and Methodologies" research from TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group, 96% of organizations run on two or more clouds and 65% of respondents indicated they run on four or more. Announcements around the Tanzu suite adds innovation to the overall VMware multi-cloud vision and supports what we've seen in our research.
So, empowering modern application development and operations is a primary focus from VMware. In the dynamic landscape of modern application development -- where agility and scalability are paramount -- VMware Tanzu remains as a comprehensive suite of tools designed to empower application teams and streamline operational workflows.
Tanzu has diverse offerings that aim to streamline the way organizations approach application development, deployment and management while also taking advantage of the Spring development community. Let's review what was announced at VMware Explore and the key components of VMware Tanzu that teams can utilize in their organizations.
Tanzu Application Engine for efficient app development
At the forefront of VMware Tanzu's offerings is the Tanzu Application Engine -- currently in beta -- a toolset that bridges the gap between application teams and platform engineering focused on day zero or build operations. This platform enables app teams to communicate about their business requirements -- such as high availability, enhanced security or scalability -- and empowers platform engineers to embed these specifications into an Application Space.
The features provide curated Application Space and ensures that the requirements are automatically and consistently enforced at runtime. The Application Engine's capability extends across diverse Kubernetes clusters and clouds, which provides a unified experience regardless of the underlying infrastructure. By simplifying the process of translating business needs into technical implementations, Tanzu Application Engine aims to accelerate development timelines while enhancing application quality.
Intelligent Assist for proactive operations
Moving beyond traditional operational practices, VMware Tanzu announced Intelligent Assist -- in tech preview -- which aims to transform operations from reactive to proactive. Intelligent Assist will use generative AI to power a conversation chatbot experience and streamline operational workflows.
Operating through VMware Tanzu Hub's integrated solutions, this AI-driven chatbot harnesses the federated data architecture to provide real-time insights, recommendations and solutions. We've seen in our research that roughly 45% of organizations want to harness generative AI's approach to streamline their processes and pinpoint areas that warrant enhancement. By anticipating issues and automating routine tasks, Intelligent Assist can enhance operational efficiency and let IT teams focus on strategic initiatives rather than firefighting.
Optimize costs and performance with CloudHealth
VMware Tanzu CloudHealth -- in beta -- takes optimization to new heights by introducing forecasting powered by machine learning (ML). This predictive feature will help optimize budgets with accurate forecasts to enable organizations to allocate resources more effectively. Additionally, dynamic Kubernetes rightsizing without downtime enhances resource used and further cuts costs.
Empower ops teams with Insights
According to our research, operational challenges often stem from the complexity of distributed environments. Our research also showed that operational complexity is one of the top concerns of organizations.
VMware Tanzu Insights aims to alleviate these challenges by providing operations teams with holistic visibility and deeper insights into Kubernetes, AWS and Azure environments. Through ML- and AI-powered analysis, this tool facilitates efficient troubleshooting and issue resolution. By equipping operations teams with the right insights at the right time, Tanzu Insights looks to enhance system reliability and availability.
Multi-cloud governance with Guardrails
In multi-cloud environments, governance and policy enforcement are quite important. VMware Tanzu Guardrails aims to address these challenges through policy-based automation. Our research showed 47% of organizations channel their resources surrounding governance into optimized code structures and automated error detection.
Guardrails lets organizations to create standardized landing zones on cloud platforms like AWS and Azure. Moreover, automated policy enforcement ensures that compliance and governance requirements are consistently met across the entire cloud landscape. By simplifying governance and enhancing consistency, Tanzu Guardrails facilitates smooth multi-cloud operations.
Migration and modernization with Application Transformer
Another top concern for many organizations is application migration and modernization. VMware Tanzu Application Transformer offers support for migration assessment and planning, and streamlines app migration to VMware Clouds and public clouds.
Enterprise Strategy Group research indicated one of the main draws of using generative AI for application development is to speed up code creation. With 51% of organizations committed to this goal, it's evident that they desire to reshape development workflows. The introduction of APIs for third-party integrations in beta expands its capabilities, enabling organizations to pull their preferred tools and services seamlessly. This comprehensive approach to migration and modernization ensures a higher success rate for initiatives of this nature.
Paul's POV
Our research showed that 96% of organizations are running on two or more clouds. VMware Tanzu presents an expansive suite of tools that cater to the diverse needs of modern application development and operations. Each component in the suite can address possible pain points in the software development lifecycle with added features for extra layers of intelligence and efficiency. Developers and IT pros at VMware Explore recognize the potential with offerings like Tanzu and what hurdles they still need to clear for accelerated cloud adoption and modernization.
Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget. Its analysts have business relationships with technology vendors.
