Broadcom Inc. today announced the VMware Tanzu 10 platform at the VMware Explore 2024 conference, making it easier for developers to build cloud-native applications while providing IT teams with the control plane and governance tools they need to manage Kubernetes clusters at scale.
Additionally, within the Tanzu platform, Broadcom is adding Tanzu AI solutions, a set of capabilities that make it easier to build and deploy generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
The goal is to give developers a framework that makes it easy to build cloud-native applications securely, said Purnima Padmanabhan, general manager of Tanzu at Broadcom.
At the core of this effort is an abstraction layer called Application Space that insulates developers from the underlying operational concerns that platform engineering teams can manage, for example, by programmatically deploying Kubernetes clusters using the Tanzu Salt configuration management platform and command line interface (CLI) tooling.
In effect, these application spaces provide a lightweight version of a platform-as-a-service PaaS environment. Many of the design principles used to create VMware Tanzu 10 come from the open-source Cloud Foundry PaaS, originally developed by Pivotal Software and eventually integrated into VMware.
Other features include visibility tools that identify relationships between applications and the underlying infrastructure on which they are deployed, and built-in service bindings that connect applications to middleware and databases that can be automatically provisioned and augmented using the Tanzu application catalog.
Additionally, Application Advisor for Java applications developed using the Spring framework makes it easy to secure applications, fix vulnerabilities, enforce policies, and conduct audits, and there is a Java build pack that optimizes startup time for Spring applications.
Broadcom also offers a set of Tanzu extensions for building and deploying generative AI applications, including observation and monitoring tools to identify the root cause of accuracy and performance issues related to large language models (LLMs).
In addition to supporting Python, the Tanzu AI solution includes Spring AI, an open-source application framework that Java developers can use to build applications, and an extensible application programming interface (API) gateway based on specifications defined by OpenAI to connect to more than 100 open-source LLMs.
Tanzu AI Solutions also supports VMware Private AI Foundation, an instance of the platform pre-integrated with NVIDIA's IT infrastructure.
Finally, Borad's Avi Load Balancer has been integrated with Tanzu Application Service, adding support for the Gateway application programming interface (API) defined by the Kubernetes technical oversight committee. Broadcom also plans to add support for Generative AI Copilot for Avi Load Balancer.
Ultimately, Broadcom is advocating for a more flexible PaaS experience in a Kubernetes environment that allows developers to self-serve their needs without IT or cybersecurity teams unnecessarily impeding developer productivity. The challenge, as always, is getting the various fiefdoms of IT to sacrifice privileges for the greater good.
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