As companies digitally transform their operations, the applications being designed to run their systems and provide services are increasingly being delivered with containers orchestrated by Kubernetes. In essences, containers have become the new package for delivering applications – much like the traditional role of virtual machines, which has broad implications for IT infrastructure in general, but poses a significant threat to VMware-based IT infrastructure in particular. With 500 million apps being developed over the next 5 years, 54 percent of container instances will be deployed primarily in the data center by 2023 according to IDC.

The fact is that the new ecosystem of tools and operation models required by modern applications requires container support. When lines of business (LOB) buy new apps or developers create new apps and this support is not available from traditional IT infrastructure and operations support in an organization, shadow IT and public cloud use accelerates. The role of NYGCI here is to help IT operators as their customers support new application construct while leveraging existing investment.

Modern apps are composed of multiple logic models connected through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). For years, monolithic architectures have been the standard for enterprise application development. These applications often run-on virtual machines with great power and efficiency. However, the applications, the hardware and the tools that support them have proven costly to update with long lead times and complicated scaling.

In cloud-native applications, components of the app are segmented into discrete logic modules called micro-services, which are then bundled and deployed within containers. This container and microservice relationship allows modern apps to be easily updated and scaled. To manage these containerized workloads, organizations use an open-source management platform called Kubernetes. This is the new logic for modern app deployment and management whereas traditional “run-the-business” data sources and other logic will remain in VMs for the forseeable future.

A modern-applications approach leverages existing services combined with new capabilities so both must co-exist. Application portfolios will be transformed over time. Both in-house developed and off-the shelf are increasingly delivered as containers.

vSphere now includes containers with Kubernetes orchestration and it’s called vSphere with Tanzu. Customers must choose which edition of Tanzu they wish to purchase. Tanzu Basic runs Kubernetes in vSphere and Tanzu Standard allows customers to run Kubernetes across multiple clouds. Each Tanzu edition builds upon the features available in lower editions.

Tanzu Basic is for customers that want to support simple, containerized, off-the-shelf applications and access Kubernetes as a feature of vSphere. It allows a customer to adopt Kubernetes as part of their existing infrastructure and manage it with their current team. It simplifies the adoption of Kubernetes on-premises, putting cloud native constructs at the VI Admin’s fingertips as part of vSphere 7 on premises.

Tanzu Standard is for customers that want to support containerized applications and operate Kubernetes across multiple clouds, such as on-premises, public, and edge. It allows a customer to deploy a single Kubernetes distribution across environments and manage policy and security for all their clusters from one central control plane. It simplifies the adoption of Kubernetes for multi-cloud putting centralized control of policy at the infrastructure’s team fingertips as part of VMware vSphere.

From a sales perspective, customers might need VMware Tanzu if they are using vSphere and:

• Looking to refresh their infrastructure
• Show interest in containers
• Develop applications with an agile approach
• Have a major business initiative
• A new change agent CIO
• Rewriting a critical business application