SAN FRANCISCO — VMware kicked off VMworld with more proof that it’s all in on containers — specifically Kubernetes — in the form of Tanzu, its new Kubernetes’ products and services portfolio.

Currently this portfolio includes offerings like PKS and it will add all of Pivotal’s products when that acquisition closes. In the future Tanzu will include Project Pacific, which VMware unveiled today as a technology preview. This new technology embeds Kubernetes natively into vSphere, VMware’s virtualization platform, thus converging containers and virtual machines (VMs), and adding a container runtime into the hypervisor.

This is different than what VMware has done in the past with PKS, which is to run that Kubernetes service as a layer on top of vSphere.

“Project Pacific itself is a re-architecture of vSphere where Kubernetes is being built into the core of vSphere,” explained Kit Colbert, CTO of cloud platform at VMware, in an interview with SDxCentral in the lead up to VMworld.

“This is a really big deal,” added VMware CTO Chris Wolf. “[Project Pacific] is the most innovative and disruptive work we’ve done to our platform over the last 10 years. It’s an embedded Kubernetes control plane, so from a developer perspective this is native Kubernetes on top of vSphere. And from an ops perspective they can continue to use the tools they have in place to manage Kubernetes and they can also use their familiar VMware tools like vRealize Operations or vCenter.”

The vendor also previewed Tanzu Mission Control, which will be the first product in the Tanzu portfolio. It provides a single point of control from which customers will be able to manage all their Kubernetes clusters regardless of where they run. This includes VMware, Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Google, and do-it-yourself container environments.

VMware’s not saying when these two new products will be generally available. But it says that these, combined with its other offerings including PKS, and those recently acquired from Heptio, Bitnami, and (coming soon) Pivotal, provide enterprises with a complete framework to build, run, and manage cloud-native applications.

It says the first step for enterprises that want to start down the Kubernetes path is PKS, or Pivotal Container Service. This is VMware’s flagship Kubernetes offering that it co-developed with Pivotal and Google. It allows customers to deploy and manage Kubernetes on-premises.

VMware also recently acquired Bitnami, which provides a catalog of pre-built application content for Kubernetes clusters. Today at VMworld the company announced Project Galleon as a beta offering that will enable enterprise IT to deliver a customized up-to-date application stacks and formats to their end developers that are multi-cloud ready.

And to manage these cloud-native applications, Project Pacific will enable app-level control for applying policies, quota, and role-based access to developers, according to the company.

However, VMware also faces challenges as it moves further down the Kubernetes path. A big one is that it needs to increase its credibility among developers. Colbert acknowledged this, and he admitted that “historically VMware has focused on the IT operations team and not as much on the developers.”

However, that’s been a big focus area for the company over the past two years, he added, pointing to “some of the areas where we’ve invested in and made acquisitions: Heptio, Bitnami, and now Pivotal. We’re now No. 3 in terms of Kubernetes contributors. I totally get the perception, but I think the reality is very different.”

And, in case you’re still wondering (as I was) why the name Tanzu: if you spell it with an “s” instead of a “z,” to Tansu, it means modular cabinets. Like containers.