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VMware Tanzu Powers New Java Offering: Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise
Microsoft is previewing a new enterprise Java service for its Azure cloud platform, powered by VMware Tanzu components.
Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise advances the Azure Spring Cloud service announced in 2019 as a partnership between Microsoft and Pivotal Software, which was later acquired by VMware. It was meant to help developers creating Spring Boot applications focus on building writing app code -- such as microservices -- rather than pedestrian tasks like configuring infrastructure.
The Spring Framework provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model for modern Java-based enterprise applications for any kind of deployment platform. Spring Boot speeds up the development of web application and microservices with Spring Framework.
[Click on image for larger view.] Architecture Diagram for Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise and Standard Tiers (source: VMware).
The new fully managed service is optimized to fit enterprise needs with a new Azure Spring Cloud tier designed for typical use cases like:
- Customers seeking an upgrade from the standard Tier of Azure Spring Cloud
- Customers that are new to Tanzu, all in on Azure and don't have an ops teams
- Customers want an Azure native experience and want to transition their Tanzu Application Service (TAS) workloads
Microsoft said that customer feedback revealed the need for such an enterprise-optimized service featuring commercially supported components. Those would be VMware Tanzu components that help businesses run Kubernetes and manage Kubernetes across multiple clouds.
VMware said customer feedback indicated:
- Managed services require additional configurability and flexibility to fit enterprise requirements
- Developer organizations value flexibility but also seek established effective patterns and guidance that can help their systems scale and evolve with changing business needs
- IT teams need enterprise and operational support—both for cloud infrastructure and for open source software utilized by their teams, and ideally with full integration between the two
Focusing on configuration, integration, flexibility and support, the initial components available in this first Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise preview include:
- Tanzu Build Service
- Tanzu Application Configuration Service
- Tanzu Service Registry
[Click on image for larger view.] VMware Tanzu Settings and Component Selection in Azure Portal (source: Microsoft).
Components scheduled to be added include Tanzu Spring Cloud Gateway and Spring Cloud Data Flow.
"Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise runs on Azure in a fully managed environment," Microsoft said. "You get all the benefits of Azure, and the experience is familiar and intuitive. Just create your instances using a provisioning tool of your choice -- Azure portal, Azure CLI, Azure Resource Manager Template, or Terraform."
[Click on image for larger view.] Azure Spring Cloud Enterprise Tier w/VMware Tanzu (source: Azure Marketplace).
Anyone interested in putting the new preview offering through its paces can go to the Azure Marketplace entry and click the blue "Contact Me" button.
The private preview opened up today precedes a public preview scheduled to start near the end of the year, with general availability planned for early next year.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.