Broadcom bolstered VMware’s cloud-native offerings with updates to its Tanzu platform-as-a-service (PaaS) service and expanded work with cloud operating system provider Canonical.

VMware rolled out Tanzu 10.3, which includes a host of new updates. The most prominent is a new Data Intelligence service designed to help users connect their data and applications.

Tanzu Data Intelligence is a data lakehouse platform that integrates ingestion, processing, and querying with AI and machine learning into a single offering. This allows users a single point of observability and control over different data types and the ability to pull that data more easily into their containerized infrastructure.

The updated Tanzu platform also provides a new service publishing feature that allows application developers to offer their applications as services in the Tanzu Platform Marketplace; new AI model quota capabilities to support webhook integrations for greater control over AI implementations; new application onboarding and modernization abilities; a new vulnerability dashboard; and integrated data services observability.

Tanzu is Broadcom’s pre-engineered PaaS designed to run on top of its halo VMware Cloud Platform (VCP) or any infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform. It stands apart from the VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS), which is a Kubernetes runtime and orchestration service that is included in VCF.

Broadcom has been steadily updating Tanzu since it closed on the VMware acquisition, including the broad Tanzu 10 launch at last year’s Explore event and more recent AI-related updates earlier this year. However, Broadcom management has been more vocal in touting the benefits of its halo VCF and vSphere offerings, which have overshadowed Tanzu.

Tanzu GM Purnima Padmanabhan, during a press pre-briefing for the VMware Explore Barcelona 2024 event, towed that company line while touting Tanzu’s benefits.

“VCF and Tanzu platform are like peanut butter and jelly, because when you have a strong private cloud with VCF, and since we are all within the same organization, very, very tight integrations,” Padmanabhan said. “What you will see is, if you are on private cloud … don’t go for a bag of parts. Take VCF, do Tanzu platform, and you have the full stack for application, for data, for any packages, for security, for operations, everything fully included, and that is the power.”

Padmanabhan more recently noted that around 60% of current Tanzu customers “run on public cloud or run on a combination of private and public cloud.”

“We are saying infrastructure is [a] commodity for us from a Tanzu perspective,” Padmanabhan said. “Now, of course, when we are with VCF, we do tight integration into vSphere and NSX, but we also have great integrations into all the other cloud providers.”

Cozying up to Canonical

VMware also expanded work with Canonical, which is focused on Canonical providing a more tightly integrated container environment for VCF users.

The main updates include the packaging of VCF with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro and additional support. This will allow for the use of the Ubuntu operating system and Kubernetes-based Chiseled containers integrated into VCF.

Prashanth Shenoy, VP of product marketing for VCF, explained that this integration will result in a slimmer container image package that will make it easier and safer for users to “build, ship, and run their Kubernetes images.”

“The Chiseled containers that Ubuntu containers provide mean that you have minimal package dependency when you want to ship your applications, so you can ship your applications faster, and it reduces the attack surface by only packaging what is truly required, so your applications can consume less space and [a] smaller registry size,” Shenoy said.

The tighter integration also includes access to Ubuntu images with precompiled virtualized GPU drivers that reduce the dependency on external repositories and internet access. This favors air-gapped environments where an organization might want to run applications in a more secure or intermittently connected environment.

These updates hack at what analysts have noted is a growing need for container platform providers to help end-users better manage growing data management challenges tied to increased containerization.

“Removing friction is now the primary mantra in making app modernization successful,” GlobalData’s Charlotte Dunlap wrote in a report earlier this year. “As Kubernetes adoption expands, reducing complexity through intuitive interfaces and intelligent automation is essential.

“Observability tools that integrate AI and open-source technologies not only empower DevOps teams but also bring more IT roles into the modernization journey. The focus must now shift to creating cohesive, user-friendly platforms that drive efficiency, scalability, and faster time to value.”