VMware today combined pieces of its Tanzu and Aria cloud-native application delivery portfolios in a move to “drive software agility” and “think about the problem differently,” Purnima Padmanabhan, VMware modern apps and management leader, told a group of reporters ahead of VMware Explore 2023.

A majority of CIOs VMware talks with, for instance, say the speed with which they deliver applications to the market is “very critical” for the health of their business. “In a world where business priorities [and] business objectives can change within days, software agility has become critical because it's driving business agility,” she argued.

Organizations are turning to technologies like Kubernetes, open-source projects and multicloud environments to address those app delivery pressures. Although the containerized approach can be more agile, “it doesn't come without challenges,” Padmanabhan said, citing the complexity of multiple tools, teams and technologies. “You have a massive n-by-n matrix [of] tools that you're managing just to take advantage of the power of cloud and compute across anywhere.”

If VMware had opted to create “yet another vendor solution” focused on accelerated development, Kubernetes policy management or runtime improvements, that would have been “insufficient,” she pointed out. “Imagine if we could – rather than think about all these multicloud environments as disparate environments – have a common app and data platform that gave you a common source of truth,” she said.

“We have to help teams integrate with the ecosystem and get the power of all these clouds, but also get the speed and agility they really need.”

By combining pieces of its Tanzu and Aria app delivery and operation management portfolios, VMware is introducing a new version of Tanzu Application Platform (TAP) and Tanzu Intelligence Services, designed to be a one-stop-shop for multicloud application development, delivery, optimization and management.

One addition to TAP is the Tanzu Application Engine, currently in beta, which allows platform engineering teams to embed requirements like availability, secure connectivity and scalability into a curated “Application Space” that automates enforcement of requirements at runtime, regardless of what cloud or Kubernetes cluster the code is running in.

The platform now offers support for multicloud Kubernetes operations via lifecycle management for Microsoft's Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS), in addition to existing support for Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and “any other Kubernetes in the wild.”

The TAP updates also include a developer portal with curated application templates, secure supply-chain automation, and open-source customization.

The new Tanzu Intelligence Services is built on VMware's common data platform, dubbed Tanzu Hub, and optimizes application cost, performance and security across any number of cloud providers. “We had initially introduced the notion of Aria Hub, and now we've extended that functionality. We are plugging in all our active components – the ability to develop, operate and optimize – to the hub,” Padmanabhan said.

This “federated platform” enables plug and play functionality for different tools and solutions, and it provides “high speed granularity so that you always know what's happening with your environment,” she explained.

The executive also highlighted Tanzu CloudHealth and the tech preview of Tanzu Intelligent Assist. “The team around intelligence services is really leveraging the power of AI [artificial intelligence] and ML [machine learning] to truly transform the large volume of data that we have,” which targets deeper cost savings based on ML forecasting and Kubernetes right sizing capabilities. Intelligent Assist is VMware's new generative AI-based natural language chatbot that allows teams to interact with their data and applications tied to Tanzu Hub and reach efficient resolutions.